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BURDETTE, R. J. William Penn (1644-1718). 
By Robert J. Burdette. New York : Henry Holt & 
Co., 1882. i6mo, pp. 2>^(i. (Lives of American 
Worthies,) 



PENN, WILLIAM, (1644^1718). By Robert J. 
Burdette. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1882. 
i6mo, pp. 366. (Lives of American Worthies.) 



BIOGRAPHY. William Penn (1644-1718). By 
Robert J. Burdette, New York : Henry Holt & Co., 
1882. i6mo, pp. 366, (Lives of American Worthies.) 



HISTORY. William Penn (1644-1718). By 
Robert J. Burdette. New York : Henry Holt & Co., 
1882. i6mo, pp. 366. (Livesof American Worthies.) 



Lives of American Worthies. 



NO IF PUBLISHED, 
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, (1440-1506), 

By W. L. Alden, {of the New York Times) 
Author of " The Moral Pirates ;' etc. 
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH, (1579-1631), 

By Charles Dudley Warner, Author of 
''My Summer iti a Garden" etc. 
WILLIAM PENN, (1644-1 715), 

By Robert J. Burdette, of the Burlington 
Hazvkeye. 
IN RAPID PREPARATION, 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, (1706-1790), 

By 
GEORGE WASHINGTON, (1732-1799), 

By John Habberton, Author of '' Hele^i's 
Babies," etc. 

THOMAS JEFFERSON, (1743-1826), 
By 

ANDREW JACKSON, (1767-1845), 

By George T. Lanigan, Author of '•'•Fables 
out of the World:' 
New York, May, 1882. 



LIVES OF AMERICAN WORTHIES 



William Penn 



(1644— 1718) 



BY 



ROBERT J. BURDETTE 



yy^ 




NEW Y O R' K^,^^ nr v, ,^u ,v\6;^J^ 
HE NY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1882 






COPYRIGHT, 1882, 
BY 

HENRY HOLT & CO. 



WILLIAM PENN, 



CHAPTER I. 

HE PUTS ON HIS HAT. 

IT riLLIAM PENN was born in London, on 
• • Monday morning, October 14, 1644. He 
was not born with his hat on, but this is 
the only time he was ever seen in his bare head. 
The fact that he was born on wash-day was 
regarded by the augurs as an indication that 
he would be a man of peace, loving quiet and 
determined to ^have it, if it cost him a life-time 
of contention and dispute. 

He came of an old family. The Penns dated 
their back numbers away into the earlier years 
of the 1 6th century. In Penn village, Bucking- 
hamshire, the first William Penn on record, the 
great-grandfather of our William, died in 1591, 
and he now lies before the altar of Mintye 
church, in Wiltshire. Even in those old days, 
the Penns were mightier than the sword. They 



2 WILLIAM PENN. [1644. 

were merchants, and brought much wealth 
from the loud-sounding sea. 

The father of the great Quaker, also William 
Penn,— for this thrifty family was very econom- 
ical in the matter of names, — was a sailor. 
His father before him, Giles Penn, was captain 
of a merchantman, and young VViUiam shipped 
before the mast on his father's vessel. In those 
o-ood old times the traffic of the sea was about 
equally divided between the merchants and the 
pirates; so the honest merchant, who robbed 
nobody save his customers, carried his purse in 
one hand and a pistol in the other, as he sailed. 
The pirate of the time was a most avaricious 
wretch. Whatever he saw he wanted, and 
what he wanted he got, unless the owner car- 
ried the longest cutlass and the heaviest guns. 
So the young sailor was well trained in all the 
ways of trade. He bought in the cheapest and 
sold in the highest market, and thumped the 
pirates, until, loving fighting better than trad- 
ing, he entered the royal navy. 

It is evident that this WiUiam Penn did not 
inherit the Quaker principles of his renowned 
son. Before he was twenty years old he was a 
captain in the royal navy, not by purchase, but 



^t. I.J A FIGHTING PENN. 3 

by rapid promotion on his merits. Having now 
a secured position which would keep him away 
from home the greater part of the time,— for 
only officers of the United States navy are com- 
pelled to live ashore,— Captain Penn married a 
Dutch girl, Margaret Jasper, daughter of John 
■ Jasper, a merchant of Rotterdam. Margaret 
was very wealthy, but Captain Penn did not 
consider this a bar to their union. '' No," said 
the frank, honest-hearted sailor, '' I would marry 
you if you had ten times so much money." His 
father-in-law was deeply affected by this unself- 
ish declaration, and on the 6th of January, 1643, 
the young people were married, and took hand- 
some lodgings in London, living near the Tower, 
which was then the fashionable quarter for naval 
men. Captain f enn was a good liver ; he wore 
good clothes, drank good claret and better 
sack, was fond of gay society, and took good 
care of William Penn. He was ambitious, but 
his ambition was tempered Avith caution, and he 
was led more by interest than principle. " So 
long as I get the interest regularly," he said, ''I 
will not trouble you for the principle," and this 
feeble joke affords a key to his motives in life. 
In the quarrel between the King and the Com- 



4 WILLIAM PENN, [1644. 

mons, in 1643, Captain Penn calmly but firmly 
established himself upon the fence until he could 
see in which cart the melons were loaded. 
Those were stirring times. Charles was more 
than ever absolute, the people more than ever 
republican ; the quarrel was deepening in its 
intensity and bitterness. One of the first trials 
of strength, the dispute over the command of 
the navy, was settled in favor of the Commons 
by the appointment of Lord Warwick as Lord 
High Admiral; and when Captain Penn saw 
the melons loaded into the people's cart, he 
came down from his high seat on the fence and 
said that he too was a reformer, and cast his lot 
with the strongest side. " It is a frosty day," he 
said, " when I happen to be shut out with a mi- 
nority." He was placed in command of a twen- 
ty-eight-gun ship, the " Fellowship; •" slipped 
anchor and dropped down the river Saturday 
morning, October 12th, and the Monday morn- 
ing following he was telephoned from the city: 

'' Hello, Fellowship !" 

*' Hello, Central !" 

" Boy — 'smorning — blue eyes — eight-pounder. 
Good-bye." 

And without another word he rushed ashore 



^t. lo.] CLIMBING UP. 5 

and chased the first street-car all the way to his 
lodgings. 

Stormy times for the young Quaker, passing 
his childhood in Essex, while his father sailed 
the seas over, sweeping St. George's Channel 
like a cyclone, threshing the French wherever 
he found them, winnowing the seafaring royal- 
ists like chaff, chasing the dashing Rupert all 
along the coasts of Portugal, and first carrying 
the terror of English arms into Italian waters ; a 
captain at nineteen years, rear-admiral at twenty- 
three, admiral of the Irish Sea at twenty-five, 
and vice-admiral " to the Streights" at twenty- 
nine. There was a model fighting father for a 
peace-loving Quaker son. The arm of the peo- 
ple had torn away the crown of Charles Stuart, 
and his head c^me away with it ; the Protector 
succeeded Parliament, and Vice-Admiral Penn 
was one of the first naval officers to send in his 
adhesion to the new government. For Crom- 
well he smote the navy of Holland, and fairly 
drove his wife's relations off the seas; he added 
Jamaica to the British dominions, and suffered 
his first defeat at Hispaniola. 

Never at heart devoted to Cromwell, and 
always loyally and devotedly attached to the 



b WILLIAM FENN. [1654. 

interests of Admiral Penn, Admiral Penn de- 
manded compensation of the Protector for the 
losses his family suffered in Ireland during the 
civil war, and received all he demanded, 
** lands of full value of 300 pounds a year, near 
to a castle or fortification for their better pro- 
tection, with a good house upon them for his 
residence." Furthermore, Cromwell made it a 
special personal request that *' this order should 
be so obeyed as to leave no cause of trouble to 
the Admiral and his family in the matter ; but 
so that they might enjoy the full benefit of the 
estate while he was fighting his countrj^'s bat- 
tles in foreign lands." 

And having thus got out of Cromwell all he 
could reasonably expect, and seeing the Penn 
family well provided for so far as the Protec- 
torate was concerned, the thrifty Admiral, De- 
cember 25, took his pen in hand and wrote his 
Christmas present to Charles Stuart, at Cologne, 
offering to place the whole of the fleet under 
his command at his disposal, and run it into any 
port he might designate. '' It will be a lively 
administration," said Admiral Penn, " that can 
change quicker than I can," and he smiled to 



^t. 10.] LAID BY THE HEELS. y 

think how easily a true statesman can get 
around civil-service reform. 

Cromwell knew of the Admiral's treason 
almost as soon as Charles, but he said not a 
word, until the failure of the attack on His- 
paniqla, when in his wrath he stripped General 
Venables and Admiral Penn of their commands 
and dignities, and shut them up in separate dun- 
geons of the Tower, to think about it. Here the 
Admiral subsisted for some time on liberal ra- 
tions of humble-pie, an English dish very similar 
to the American '' crow." He ate all that was 
sent him, and passed his plate for more. He 
addressed a very humble petition to Cromwell, 
confessing his faults, at least those of which he 
supposed Cromwell was already informed, and 
threw himself on the Protector's mercy. Crom- 
well at once generously restored him to home 
and liberty, and the grateful Admiral imme- 
diately resumed his treasonable correspondence. 
He retired to his Irish estates, that with the 
greater security he might plot for the return 
of the exiled princes and the overthrov/ of the 
man who gave him those estates. He prefaced 
this step in the usual manner by announcing, as 



8 WILLIAM PENN. [1659. 

all politicians do when about to concoct some 
unusual piece of rascality and dishonesty, that 
he had gone out of politics forever. 

Then came the night of September 2d ; there 
was awe and unrest and fear, conflicting hopes 
and anxious thoughts in the hearts of men. The 
day went drearily out on London town, and the 
darkness of a night settled down upon it such 
as no man's remembrance could parallel. The 
storm came with the darkness. Through the 
clouds that tossed, a sea of inky fury in the skies, 
came no gleam of light, no ray of any star. The 
wind came on in sullen, sobbing gusts. Then 
in wailing cadences it swept over the darkened 
town, wilder and louder as the night wore on, 
a shrieking gale that rose at midnight to the 
madness of a hurricane ; chimneys toppled and 
were hurled headlong in the streets, and the 
roofs were torn crashing from the houses. 
Ships dragged their anchors, and their hawsers 
parted at the wharves. In the parks at the 
Protector's palace the uprooted trees were 
hurled to the ground. In the horror of the con- 
tending elements in all that long night of dark- 
ness and storm, Cromwell lay dying, praying for 
his enemies. With the next morning dawned 



^t. 15.] DEATH OF CROMWELL. 9 

the anniversary of the battles of Dunbar and 
Worcester, and the hand that smote the ene- 
mies of the Commonwealth on these fields was 
stilled and nerveless forever-more. 

At this time, and for a year thereafter, the 
Penns remained on their Irish estates, but the 
Admiral was busy with his intrigues. But in 
the Protectorate, mediocrity succeeded genius ; 
one year of the feeble Richard sufficed. With 
his deposition, Admiral Penn promptly de- 
scended the fence on the safe side ; declared for 
Charles ; brought the fleet over to the Restora- 
tion ; personally, on board his own ship, wel- 
comed the King to his navy ; and for all this he 
was promptly knighted by Charles and was 
made, at different times. Commissioner of the 
Admiralty and Navy, Governor of the town 
and fort of Kingsale, Vice-Admiral of Munster, 
member of the Provincial Council of 1664, and 
Great Captain Commander under his Royal 
Highness, James, Duke of York, with the un- 
derstanding that he was to be made several, 
more things as soon as the Secretary of State 
could invent names for them. And the Admi- 
ral, Commissioner, Governor, Vice-Admiral, 
Councillor, and Great Captain Commander, 



10 WILLIAM PENN. [1659 

Sir William Penn, called his son to his side 
and said, " William, my gentle boy, there is 
nothing like seeing the melons loaded on the 
cart before you climb in." 

In the mean time, William Penn, Junior, was 
at home, taking more interest in the measles 
than in politics, and getting his lessons and 
floggings with equal regularity, in accordance 
with the educational system of that day. He 
first attended a free grammar school at Chig- 
well in Essex; at twelve years of age he was 
sent to a private school in London, on Tower 
Hill, and at the age of fifteen, about the time of 
the Restoration, he was sent to Oxford, where 
he matriculated as gentleman commoner at 
Christ's Church. Pie was a hard student, 
and could row a boat in French, German, 
Dutch, and Italian, and in later life he learned 
to sell glass beads in two or three Indian dia- 
lects; but as base-ball was not then invented, 
his hands were not deformed, nor Avas his nose 
backed like a camel, but his college advantages 
were somewhat limited. He was tall and slen- 
der, but very athletic and fond of out-door 
sports ; a boy of earnest religious convictions. 
The only outburst of natural depravity that has 



^t. 15.] SOME RELIGIOUS PEOPLE. II 

been placed on record against his college life is 
the fact that he wrote a Latin poem for the 
Duke of Gloucester, with all the jokes in Italics. 
All about this boy — whose mind had from 
earliest childhood been deeply impressed on the 
subject of rehgion ; who, at the age of eleven 
years, *' Avhile sitting alone in his chamber, was 
suddenly surprised with an inward sense of 
'comfort and happiness, akin to a strong religious 
emotion ; the chamber at the same time appear- 
ing as if filled with a soft and holy light;" who, 
in his first year at Oxford, found his greatest 
delight in reading the doctrinal discussions de- 
veloped by the Puritan idea — the air was fairly 
tremulous with religious excitement and doc- 
trinal debate. Puritanism and the profligate, 
gay, irreligioys court of Charles were fighting 
with other weapons than Roundhead and Cava- 
lier had wielded on Marston Moor. There was 
a madness in the world on the subject of re- 
ligion, or rather religions, for every man seemed 
to have more religions than Colonel Ingersoll 
has none, and Familists, Anabaptists, Libertines, 
Puritans, Arians, Brownists, Antinomians, Ran- 
ters, Antitrinitarians, Independents, Calvinists, 
Arminians, Baptists, Perfectists, Presbyterians, 



12 WILLIAM PENN. [1660. 

Antiscripturists, Enthusiasts, Levellers, Papists, 
Fifth-Monarchy men, Muggletonians, Sceptics, 
Seekers, and Socinians wrangled and pelted 
each other with pamphlets. Atheists swarmed 
all over the kingdom ; one sect arose, holding as 
one of its tenets that a woman has no sovd ; St. 
Paul's Cathedral was used as a stable for horses ; 
hogs were baptized according to the established 
ritual, by the soldiers, at the consecrated fonts ; 
*' one man was found with seven wives," a 
species of religious observance which was even 
then considered abominably wicked, and is now 
only followed and permitted in some portions 
of South Africa and the United States ; prophets, 
lunatics, preachers, martyrs, fools, knaves, and 
dupes disturbed and distressed the poor old 
world with new and old doctrines, predictions, 
denunciations, dreams, revelations, and visions. 
Not only the ignorant and vulgar, but the edu- 
cated and refined had visions, and Lady Sprin- 
gett, Penn's mother-in-law, ''twice saw and 
spoke with the Son of God in her ecstatic 
dreams." 

Just at this time came George Fox, an illiter- 
ate shoemaker, plain and unlettered, read only 
in the pure diction of the English Bible, waging 



iEt. i6.] AN UNPOPULAR SECT. 1 3 

relentless war against all existing creeds, teach- 
ers, and doctrines, asking no quarter and giving 
none, preaching a divine light concealed in every 
man, a spark of the infallible Godhead, which 
was the highest guide of human conduct; a 
light free of all control ; every man and woman 
was supreme ; even the Scriptures, Fox said, are 
to be judged by the Light, — without it they are 
useless. As he preached, the established church, 
the government, the rabble, and the members of 
other denominations sought, by the usual means 
employed in those days, to modify his teaching, 
and turn him from the error of his ways. He 
was beaten and stoned, pilloried, imprisoned, 
set in the stocks, fined, passed the greater part 
of his time in jail, but the more he was perse- 
cuted the more boldly he preached ; men flocked 
to his belief, and the Children of Light, as they 
called themselves, or Quakers, as their less re- 
spectful neighbors called them, grew in number 
and multiplied and kept the jails and stocks so 
full that for some time the martyrs of the other 
denominations were unable to be accommodated 
even with standing-room by the authorities. 

And now in Oxford, Thomas Loe was preach- 
ing the new doctrmes taught by George Fox, 



14 WILLIAM PENN. [1660. 

and Penn and a few fellow-students were at- 
tracted by the neglect of forms and ceremonies 
in the services, and regularly neglected chapel 
to hear Thomas Loe. For this they were 
promptly brought up and given ten days or 
ten dollars, for non-conformity, a crime which 
at that time was considered a trifle less odious 
than high treason, but infinitely more wicked 
than murder. 

The punishment had the usual effect upon the 
young men. They now declared they would 
never attend chapel again ; they would not wear 
the gown themselves, and they would make it 
warm for any person who did. They publicly 
declared that any man who would take a book 
to church to pray out of, would use a pony for 
his Latin translations. Whenever these inde- 
pendent young men met students wearing the 
hated rubric, they pursued after them, and en- 
compassed them roundabout, and smote them 
sore, and tore the vestments from their courtly 
shoulders, and entreated them roughly ; and in 
all these reformatory movements William Penn 
was the chief reformer. He was promptly 
brought up for judgment, and without cere- 
mony the faculty suspended him. 



^t. 17.] RECEIVES THE G. B. 1 5 

When William returned home, his father did 
not see him while he was yet a long way off, and 
run to meet him and fall upon his neck. And 
when William told him that he had gone through 
college ahead of his class by several years, the 
Admiral did not appear very glad. He received 
the information with a cold silence that must 
have been very discouraging to his son. He 
could have forgiven anything but this. The 
Admiral w^as fond of recreation and fighting 
himself, went to the theatre, '' loved to dine at a 
tavern with a set of jovial companions, and was 
addicted to all the genial weaknesses of a busy 
man," says Pepys, — whatever the "genial weak- 
nesses of a busy man" may be. But conscience 
was a complaint that never troubled Sir William 
very much. If ever he was vaccinated for a 
conscience, it didn't take. He had, in his busy 
and ambitious life, always managed to get down 
on that side of the fence where the greater mul- 
titude was assembled, and he took his conscience, 
if he indulged in such a dangerous non-con- 
formist sort of luxury, with him. And to find 
his eldest and favorite son, the son on whose 
head he had builded so many bright dreams 
and plans of gayety and worldly greatness and 



1 6 WILLIAM PENN. [1664. 

Splendor, cultivating an independent unbiased 
conscience, a non-conformist at seventeen, with a 
leaning- toward Quakerism, — it was too much. 
He immediately sent the young man to Paris, 
accompanied by a select assortment of college 
friends. 

They were not Quaker college friends. Ah, 
no! They were ''howling swells," who wore 
purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously 
three times a day and once or twice at night. 
Penn joined in the recreations of the time. He 
was presented to Louis Quatorze, he wore a 
rapier, he fought in the streets one night and 
disarmed his man, he " sassed " the police, called 
the waiters by their first names, wore his watch- 
chain outside of his coat, danced the racket, and 
was " one of our kind of boys." 

In this whirl of fashionable Hfe and the bril- 
liant society of the French court, he temporarily 
went out of the Quaker business, put up the 
shutters, discharged the boy, and rented the 
shop for a sail-loft. But he was not altogether 
absorbed in Parisian revelry ; he was not frivo- 
lous. Even while he shared in the recreations 
of the time, he continued his studies under the 
learned Moses Amyrault, and with this eminent 



^t. 21.] EVIL COMMUNICATIONS. \J 

scholar he read theology and pored over the 
Fathers. Leaving Paris, he travelled through 
France and Italy with Lord Robert Spencer, 
and made the acquaintance and won the friend- 
ship of Algernon Sidney, who was then living 
in exile rather than compromise his political 
faith. 

After an absence of two years, Penn was re- 
called by Sir WiUiam. His father was pleased 
with him. The young man was tall, graceful, 
and handsome, with an almost womanly beauty ; 
wore stylish clothes, was an especial favorite 
with the ladies, parted his hair in the middle, 
wore it long and curled it ; a rapier dangled at 
his side, and it was believed by the cook that he 
carried a razor in his boot ; and, to crown all, he 
wrote poetry, French poetry — chansons d' amour, 
a kind of poetry so unfit to read that it is kept 
in duplicate in all public libraries. 

In order the more fully to crush out his 
Quakerism, the Admiral kept his son employed 
on the King's business, which brought him in 
continual contact with the irreligious and profli- 
gate court of Charles; he entered the young 
man as a student at Lincoln's Inn, with the in- 
tention of making him a lawyer, thereby de- 



1 8 WILLIAM PENN. [1665. 

stroying the last vestige of anything like a con- 
science the young man might possess ; took him 
to sea on his own ship, and let him see some 
sharp fighting between the Dutch and the Eng- 
lish ; sent him to the King with despatches, and 
just when he thought he had knocked his son's 
broad-brim into a cocked hat, the plague broke 
out in London and tumbled the Admiral's airy 
castles all about his ears. In the horror of the 
pestilence that walked in darkness and the de- 
struction that wasted at noon-day,* the mind of 
the young courtier turned back into its old chan- 
nels of rehgious fervor. When people fell dead 
in the streets and the death-rate ran up to 10,000 
cases in a single day, when the dead-cart rum- 
bled through the streets, and the dismal cry 
"■ Bring out your dead !" rose like a wail on the 
night, the young man became more serious than 
ever. He swore off going to court, bought more 
religious works, and oft as he heard a dead-cart 
rumble by, he buried himself in the Fathers and 
filled himself with tough old rugged theology 
that it would plague the plague to understand. 
When Sir William perceived with pain that the 

* David. Now do you know where to find it ? 



^t. 21.] AMONG THE LAND-LEAGUERS. I9 

Quakerine idea with which Thomas Loe had 
inoculated his son was taking again worse than 
ever, he sent him off to Ireland to look after the 
estates which the worldly-wise old Admiral had 
secured from Cromwell and the Commonwealth. 
He thought if he could get his son settled on 
the Irish estates, the excitement of being Boy- 
cotted, evicting tenants, and dodging the land- 
leaguers would divert his mind from Quaker- 
ism. 

Alas for the careful Sir William's plans ! His 
son went to Ireland willingly enough, but Ire- 
land at that time was so full of Quakers that 
their feet stuck out of the dormer windows. 
Their familiar accents fell upon the young man's 
ears like words of welcome when he reached 
Dublin. " Con,^avick, dost thee know the gos- 
soon in the ruffled shirt an' the cocked hat? Ah, 
tundher an' turf, look at the murdherin* plume 
ov him !" 

"Verily, friend Murphy, acushla, sorra the 
wan ov me knoweth. Will thee make a rush 
wid me fur the baggage ov him, do ye mind?" 

And so once more the dreams of the ambi- 
tious Sir William were frustrated. He thought 
when his son got to Shangarry Castle in the 



20 WILLIAM PENN. [1666. 

barony of Imokelly, and met with the fox-hunt- 
ing roisterers of the KillataHcks of Killmanaisy 
and the Barrynahagles of Ballymachanshara, 
and learned the taste of peat whiskey, he would 
forever-more be a man of the world. The Lord 
Lieutenant, the Duke of Ormond, maintained 
a brilliant court. The Ormonds were soldiers, 
and their talk of war infected Penn. He 
marched away with young Lord Arran to sup- 
press an insurrection of the soldiers at Carrick- 
fergus. In the siege he so distinguished himself 
that he won favorable mention in Lord Arran's 
despatches and praise from all the soldiers, for 
he inherited his father's fighting qualities. The 
Viceroy proposed that Penn should join the 
army, and offered him a company of foot. Penn 
himself, fired with military ardor, eagerly fell in 
with the idea, and earnestly besought his father 
to comply with this proposal. 

Here at last was an open road leading straight 
away from George Fox and Thomas Loe and 
the much-dreaded Quakerism, and WiUiam him- 
self was anxious to walk right down that road 
to worldly ambition and fame, when the Ad- 
miral deliberately put up the bars, resolutely 



^t. 22.] A WARLIKE PORTRAIT. 21 

refused his son permission to join the army, 
and planted his own unyielding will in opposi- 
tion to the one possible plan of carrying- out his 
long-cherished desires. Surely the Fates intend- 
ed that William Penn should be a Quaker. He 
regretfully gave up his dream of a military 
career, and, proud of his uniform and war re- 
cord, had his portrait painted, '' the only time in 
his life," says Dixon, " in his military costume. 
It is a curious fact that the only genuine por- 
trait of the great apostle of peace existing repre- 
sents him armed and accoutred as a soldier." 
There were two original copies of this portrait, 
and one of them is now in the hall of the Penn- 
sylvania Historical Society. The portrait bore 
the motto, '' Pax quseritus bello," and the war- 
like inscription, ^' Friend of Liberty, Justice, and 
Peace." 

William took off his armor, laid down his 
Quaker gun, and resumed the business of look- 
ing after the Irish estates, devised by his shrewd 
father to turn his mind away from the Quakers. 
In less than a year after his military career was 
closed, he went to Cork on this business, because 
nobody ever goes to Cork save on compulsion, 



22 WILLIAM PENN. [1667. 

heard by accident that Thomas Loe was preach- 
ing there, went in one night and heard him de- 
liver a sermon on the text, '^ There is a faith 
that overcomes the world, and there is a faith 
that is overcome by the world," and walked out 
of that meeting-house a Quaker ; in conviction, 
in principle, in scu^ and intellect, body, bones, 
breeches, and hat, a Quaker. 

On the 3d of September he was worshipping 
in Cork, when he was arrested with the rest of 
the congregation by a body of soldiers, and 
dragged to the Mayor's court on a charge of 
" riot and tumultuous assembling." The Mayor 
recognized him, and knowing him to be a friend 
of the Viceroy, offered to turn him loose on his 
own recognizance ; but William '' would not go 
back on the crowd," and so went to prison. 
The Lord President of Munster ordered his 
immediate discharge, of course, but all Dublin 
and the rest of the world knew that William 
Penn soldier, courtier, son of Admiral Sir Wil- 
liam Penn, had joined the Quakers. 

There was wrath in the house of the Penns 
when the glad news reached London. William 
was ordered home, and when he met his father 
the debate was opened before the speaker had 



^t. 23.] THE HA T. 23 

time to put the question. William did not look 
like a Quaker, — at least, not a broad-brim, thirty- 
button-coat, long-weskit Quaker. He was a 
lardy-dah Friend, with lace ruffles, rapier, long 
plume, and curls ; but he was a Quaker all the 
same, as Sir William soon learned. 

After a very stormy session the Admiral made 
a test question of the hat. His son, in common 
with all Quakers, had hat on the brain. He ate, 
walked, lived, moved, and had his being in his 
hat. The Admiral asked if he would wear his 
hat in the presence of his own father. William 
said he would. H^ would wear his hat to bed, if 
anybody slept with him, rather than take it off in 
the presence of mortal man. He might take off 
all the rest of his clothes, but his hat, never! 
You had to draw the line somewhere, and he 
drew it at the hat. Then the Admiral wanted 
to know what he would do with his hat in the 
presence of the King ? And WilHam, Avith the 
calm confidence of a man who has one ace in 
his hand ana three in his sleeve, said he would 
wear his hat over his right eye, aslant and 
defiant, turned up in front and slouched down 
behind, in the presence of all the kings in the 
deck. 



24 WILLIAM PENN. [1667. 

The Admiral, stunned with amazement that 
any man could vSet his conscience above good 
breeding, faced his peace-loving but rebellious 
son toward the front door and gently but firmly 
eliminated him. 



CHAPTER II. 

AND GETS INTO PRISON. 

'T^HROWN thus suddenly upon the country, 
■^ William boarded around for a few months, 
explaining- to his astonished relatives that he had 
had his resignation handed in to him. The houses 
of his Quaker friends were open to him, and his 
mother, eluding Sir William's vigilance, sent 
him money. It was impossible for the Admiral 
to continue the siege when the besieged kept up 
unbroken communication with his base of sup- 
plies, and aftei*" a few months' banishment the 
young Quaker was recalled, and came joyously 
home, put on a clean shirt, and passed his plate 
for another slice of the fatted veal. 

But the Admiral was still nursing his wrath, 
although it was a large, healthy wrath, that re- 
quired no nursing to keep it alive. He refused 
to speak to or even see his son. William stuck 
to his hat, and, reciprocally, his hat stuck to him. 
He graciously thee'd and thou'd everybody he 



26 WILLIAM PENN. [1668. 

met ; but Sir William refused to recognize either 
of them, and obstinately ignored his son, his hat, 
and his grammar. 

The Quaker was the most perfect democrat 
the world had ever known. He acknowledged 
no superior. He was the peer of any man ; 
hence he could not descend to the servility and 
hypocrisy of what the gentle Friends called '' hat 
worship," he would uncover in the presence of 
no man. He believed he was as good as any 
other man. 

There is nothing new or remarkable, however, 
in that doctrine. Many people who are not Qua- 
kers believe it. That is no test of our democ- 
racy. Of course we all believe we are as good 
as other men. But do we believe that other 
men are as good as ourselves ? Did the Friends 
of those days believe that ? Did George Fox 
believe the priests who persecuted and the 
magistrates who imprisoned him were as good 
as himself? Did William Penn believe Rupert, 
his father's enemy, as good a man as his father ? 
Did he think the tyrannical recorder who so 
unjustly fined him as good a man as himself? 
Certainly, we are as good as other men, and we 
doff our hats in servility to no man. But are 



JEt. 24.] A LITTLE PAMPHLET FOR A CENT. 27 

other men as good as we ? Of a verity, we be- 
lieve they are.^" 

Penn now entered upon his Quaker life with 
all earnestness and began his life-long wrangle 
for universal peace and general equality. To 
show people that he was not a man who stopped 
at any expense, and that he cared nothing what- 
ever for money, he wrote a book. He wrote the 
title first : *' Truth Exalted, in a short but sure 
Testimony against all those Religions, Faiths, 
and Worships that have been formed and fol- 
lowed in the darkness of Apostasy ; and for that 
glorious Light which is now risen and shines 
forth in the Life and Doctrine of the despised 
Quakers, as the alone good old Way of Life and 
Salvation." Having, with some difficulty, found 
a publisher for the title, it was an easy matter to 
smuggle the book in after it. 

Matters began to look alarmingly peaceful 
after the publication of this book. Jonathan 
Clapham rushed into print with an opposition 
book, "A Guide to the True Religion," in which 
he held, with the utmost Christian consideration 
peculiar to his times, that if ever a Quaker got 



Not. 



28 WILLIAM PENN. [1668. 

into heaven, it would be by guile and false pre- 
tence, and that he never could get in with his 
hat on, and that no Quaker was capable of sal- 
vation, anyhow. 

Penn came back at him with " The Guide Mis- 
taken," and there was nothing mild and luke- 
warm about Penn's books and pamphlets. A 
Quaker was permitted to fight only with his pen ; 
and when the great apostle of peace spitted an 
opposition theologian on his gray goose-quill, 
there was weeping and gnashing of teeth, in 
which everybody on the opposition benches 
joined, while the unfortunate man writhing in 
the agony of his impalement sustained the lead- 
ing part and could be heard above the full 
strength of the entire chorus. 

During his preaching that year, for Penn 
preached when he wasn't writing books, two 
members of Rev. Thomas Vincent's Presby- 
terian church were converted to the doctrines 
of George Fox, and joined the Quakers. Brother 
Vincent was profoundly agitated by this event. 
He announced a special sermon, and the church 
in Spitalfields was crowded. He pounded the 
sawdust out of his pulpit cushion in his savage 
denunciation of the Quakers, and when in the 



iEt. 24]. THE FIRST WIND FIGHT. 29 

fierceness of his wrath he smote upon the floor 
with both feet and shrieked aloud that the doc- 
trines of the Quakers were worthy of damna- 
tion, every window in the wigwam rattled. 
These sermons attracted much attention ; for 
Mr. Vincent, being able to shout in an exceeding 
loud voice and preach eight hours at a stretch, 
with no other refreshment than a barrel of water 
and a dozen handkerchiefs, was accounted a 
most eloquent man. Consequently Penn and 
George Whitehead challenged him to a joint 
discussion, which it was agreed should be held 
in Vincent's church. These wind-fights on 
denominational questions were very popular 
in those days. 

But Rev. Mr. Vincent packed the convention, 
and, long before the hour for the discussion ar- 
rived, the church was so crowded with Presby- 
terians that the Quakers had to be content with 
curbstone seats, only a few being able to wedge 
their way into the house. Vincent opened the 
discussion by asking a great many hard ques- 
tions that he couldn't answer himself, and Penn 
and Whitehead answered them so readily, or 
objected to them with such subtlety, that Vin- 
cent lost his temper, and springing to his feet 



30 WILLIAM PENN. [1668. 

abused the Quakers in a long prayer which 
lasted till midnight ; then he tacked the bene- 
diction on his '' Amen," announced that he had 
overthrown and defeated the Quakers at all 
points, put out the lights, and ordered the peo- 
ple to go home. Indignant at such unfair treat- 
ment, Penn loaded his Quaker gun with another 
pamphlet, '' The Sandy Foundation Shaken," 
and for the manner in which he treated the 
doctrine of the Trmity in this book he was 
promptly arrested and committed to the Tower, 
where he was given eight months for sentiment 
and reflection. 

His enemies tried to wear him out. A forged 
letter was picked up near the place of his arrest, 
containing matters which, had they been proved 
against Penn, would have taken off his hat and 
all the appurtenances thereunto appertaining. 
He was confined in a solitary dungeon. No one 
save his father was allowed to visit him, and he 
and his father were not on visiting terms. The 
Bishop of London was resolved that he should 
recant, or die in prison. But there was enough 
manhood in the Quaker for a dozen bishops. He 
declared " he would weary out his enemies by 
his patience ; " that '' the prison should be his 



^t. 24]. A DISHEARTENING PICTURE. 3 1 

grave before he would renounce his just opin- 
ions ; " "the Tower is to me the worst argument 
in the world." Then he turned to his ink-well 
for comfort ; they could stop his preaching, but 
he would write, and he added '' one more glori- 
ous book to the literature of the Tower." 

"No Cross, no Crown," Hke Bunyan's mas- 
ter-piece, grew out of the author's own persecu- 
tions. Not only does this work defend the 
peculiar opinions of the Friends, but it contains 
many truths that are laid in the common founda- 
tion of all Christianity, and passages that are 
even eagerly accepted by atheists and scoffers, 
and were applauded by Voltaire. Penn never 
wrote with the gloves on, and when he had oc- 
casion, in the earlier days of his Quaker zeal, to 
reprove or denounce any man or creed or de- 
nomination, he went at it with all the joyous 
energy of a newspaper showing up the vices of 
a rival village. In " No Cross, no Crown," he 
draws a very gloomy picture of this much- 
abused old planet. " As the world is older," he 
says, " it is worse. The people of this day seem 
improvers of the old stock of impiety, and have 
carried it so much farther than example that, in- 
stead of advancing in virtue upon better times, 



32 WILLIAM PENN. [i663. 

they are scandalously fallen below the life of 
heathens. Their highmindedness, lascivious- 
ness, uncleanness, drunkenness, swearing, lying, 
envy, back-biting, cruelty, treachery, covetous- 
ness, injustice, and oppression " (here he appears 
to have run out of breath) '' are so common, and 
committed with such invention and excess, that 
they have stumbled and embittered infidels and 
made them scorn that holy religion to which their 
good example should have won their affections." 
Truly, they were a hard lot of Christians in 
Penn's time, if he told the truth about them. 
But that isn't all. " This miserable defection 
from primitive times," he says, "■ I call the second 
and worst part of the Jewish tragedy upon our 
Lord. ... The false Christian's cruelty lasts 
longer ; they have first, with Judas, professed 
him, and then for these many ages most basely 
betrayed, persecuted, and crucified him, by a 
perpetual apostasy in manners from the holiness 
and self-denial of his doctrine." Christendom 
has become *' a cage of unclean birds, a den of 
thieves, a synagogue of Satan, and the receptacle 
of every unclean spirit." '' We find a Christen- 
dom now that is superstitious, idolatrous, per- 
secuting, proud, envious, malicious, selfish. 



^t. 24.] LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS. 33 

drunken, lascivious, unclean, lying, swearing, 
cursing, covetous, oppressing, defrauding, with 
all other abominations known in the earth, and 
that to an excess justly scandalous to the worst 
of heathen ages, surpassing them more in evil 
than in time." '' I shall conclude this head " 
(Chapter VI L), says this meek and lowly-minded 
non-combatant, " with the assertion that it is an 
undeniable truth, where the clergy has been most 
in power and authority and has had the greatest 
influence upon princes and States, there have 
been most confusions, wrangles, bloodshed, 
sequestrations, imprisonments, and exiles. . . . 
The worship of Christendom is visible, cere- 
monious, and gaudy ; the clergy ambitious of 
worldly preferments under the pretence of spir- 
itual promotior^^s, making the earthly revenue of 
churchmen much the reason of their function, 
being almost ever sure to leave a smaller incum- 
bence to solicit and obtain benefices of larger 
title and income." 

This last charge is important, if true. Good 
people who are worried overmuch about the ex- 
ceeding wickedness of our own times may find 
some comfort in looking at the world as WiUiam 
Penn judged it to be in his day. 



34 WILLIAM PENN. [1668. 

Still, it is encouraging to see, amid all this 
madness of universal wickedness and exceeding 
iniquity, a handful of good Quakers who were 
the lonesome leaven that was going to leaven 
the whole lump, if they had to quarrel with 
every denomination in England to do it. 

The second part of this prison book showed 
the wide range of Penn's reading, and breathes 
a more hopeful and cheerful spirit. He calls a 
jury of the wise and illustrious men of all times, 
Jew and Gentile, bond and free, Greek, Roman, 
and barbarian, from Solomon down to Paul, 
Ignatius to Augustine, cardinals, bishops, kings, 
and princes. Christian and pagan, all testifying 
" that a life of strict virtue, to do well and suffer 
ill," is the way to everlasting happiness. 

His next work in the Tower was a pamphlet, 
'' Innocency with her Open Face," and shortly 
after its publication he was released, having 
worn out persecution with his pamphlets before 
it could wear out his neck with an axe. His re- 
lease was unconditional, for Penn was not a man 
to make concessions, recantations, or promises. 

The Penn family was in a sea of trouble at 
this time. Since Admiral Penn ceased to com- 
mand the fleet, defeat and disgrace had attended 



^t. 26.] WELCOME HOME. 



35 



the English arms on the sea, and the King was 
anxious to replace the conqueror of Van Tromp 
at the head of the navy. But his wishes and 
Sir William's ambition were defeated by the 
malice and enmity of Rupert and Monk. 
Rupert had never forgiven the sailor who 
chased him up and down the coast of Portugal, 
and, in the intrigues which now placed the 
dashing cavalier in command of the fleet, Sir 
William narrowly escaped joining his son in 
the Tower. His health began to fail, and he 
longed to see his son, the manliness, honor, and 
beauty of whose character he was beginning to 
understand and appreciate. Exile from home, 
imprisonment, injustice, the horrors of the 
Tower, loss of worldly position, ridicule, perse- 
cution, all failed to move him from his convic- 
tions, and in spite of himself the Admiral was 
proud of such a son, and loved him. So when, 
long after his release from the Tower, and after 
an eight months' residence in Ireland, William 
returned home, his father, then living quietly at 
his country-seat in Essex, met him with open 
arms and a loving heart. 

However, it was about time for William Penn 
to get into prison again. The Conventicle Act, 



36 WILLIAM PENN. [1670. 

prohibiting dissenters from worshipping God 
in their own way, was renewed in April, and 
the Quakers of course went on with their ser- 
vices without paying any attention to ParHa- 
ment or its enactments. On the 14th of August, 
they went to their meeting-house in Grace- 
church Street, and found it closed, and a com- 
pany of soldiers guarding the doors. William 
Penn immediately took off his hat and began to 
preach, and the constables at once arrested him, 
together with Captain WiUiam Mead. They 
were committed to prison, treated with indig- 
nity, and placed in the dock for trial on Sep- 
tember I. 

It was a N^ry important trial. The indict- 
ment was read, and it set out the crime of the 
accused after the usual temperate and laconic 
manner of indictments. All the world knows 
that a Quaker meeting is a synonym for an 
hour of profound quiet and decorous solemnity. 
And this indictment went on to describe that 
Quaker meeting, on Gracechurch Street, as a 
place where WiUiam Penn and WiUiam Mead 
and three hundred other people "• with force 
and arms did unlawfully and tumultuously as- 
semble and congregate themselves together, to 



^t- 26.] A SOLID JOKE. 37 

the disturbance of the peace of the said lord the 
King;" and that " William Penn did take upon 
himself to preach and to speak," "by reason 
whereof a great concourse and tumult of peo- 
ple in the street aforesaid, then and there, a 
long time did remain and continue, to the great 
disturbance of the peace of the King, and his 
law, and to the great terror and disturbance of 
many of his liege people and subjects." His- 
tory contains no more thrilling and direful 
picture of a Quaker meeting than this. 

About all the decency and fairness in this 
trial was confined to the jury-box and the pris- 
oners' dock. Certainly there was none in the 
court. The prisoners were compelled to plead 
before they heard the indictment. "Plead 
first," said the Recorder, "and we will show you 
then what you are pleading to." An official 
rudely tore their hats from their heads. 

"How dare you," he said, "come into court 
with your hats on?" 

''Put those hats on the prisoners again," 
shouted the Lord Mayor. 

This was done, and then the prisoners were 
fined forty marks apiece for contempt of court 
in wearing their hats. 



38 WILLIAM PENN. [1670, 

" Shoot the hat," said the Recorder, smiling 
to think he had made a remark that would pass 
into history. 

When Penn was brought into court after re- 
cess, the bailiff again attempted to remove his 
hat. 

" If you take off my hat," said Penn, *' you 
will be sorry for it." 

The bailiff sneered, and snatched off the hat, 
and a cannon-ball weighing thirty-two pounds 
fell on his feet with dreadful effect. 

*' I am no slouch," said the Quaker, '' if I do 
have fits, and I don't wear a two-story hat for 
nothing." 

And as the bailiff went to the hospital he re- 
membered what Penn said. 

Two or three witnesses only wxre examined. 
They testified that they heard Penn preach, but 
couldn't hear what he said. Throughout the 
trial the prisoners talked back at the court, to 
the great discomfort and wrath of the Recorder, 
who besought the Lord Mayor to stop Penn's 
mouth. They were finally put in the bale-dock, 
where they could neither see nor be seen by the 
bench, jury, or public, and from this seclusion 
Penn shouted more vigorously than ever, ap- 



iEt. 26.] A BRAVE JURY. 39 

pealed to the jury, contradicted the Recorder, 
and objected, and took exceptions, until the case 
was closed and the jury retired. 

Eight of the jurors came in, after being out 
an hour and a half, saying they could not agree. 
The four obstinate jurymen were then brought 
into court, roundly abused, and ordered to go 
out and bring in a verdict. Then they all came 
in with a verdict of " Guilty of speaking in 
Gracechurch Street," which the court refused 
to receive, and the jurors refused to bring in 
any other. The Recorder ordered them *' locked 
up without meat, drink, fire, or tobacco." 

** We will have a verdict," said this sagacious 
lawyer, "or you shall starve for it." 

The prisoners were taken back to Newgate, 
Penn shouting to the jurors, *'You are Eng- 
lishmen ! Mind your privileges ! Give not away 
your rights !" 

Next morning, Sunday, the jury was brought 
in once more, and returned the same old verdict. 
The court again abused the jury savagely, Ed- 
ward Bushel coming in for the greatest share. 
The verdict in the case of Penn was " Guilty of 
speaking in Gracechurch Street," and in Wil- 
liam Mead's case, " Not guilty." 



40 WILLIAM PENN. [1670. 

" I will have a positive verdict," said the Re- 
corder, " or you shall starve." 

Again the jury was sent out, and a third time 
came in with the same verdict. The wrath of 
the court was unbounded. The Recorder longed 
" for something like the Spanish Inquisition in 
England." Penn defended his jury, and the Lord 
Mayor threatened to slit the jurors' noses, and 
to stake Penn to the ground with fetters, which 
only elicited ringing defiance from the fearless 
Quaker. The jury, famishing from a fast of 
thirty hours, refused to retire again, and were 
dragged away by force. 

Next morning, after another night of imprison- 
ment, a night without food, or fire, or water, 
weak .from fasting, wearied by loss of sleep, 
feverish from thirst, twelve haggard, suffering 
jurors, — Thomas Veer, Edward Bushel, John 
Hammond, Charles Milson, Gregory Walklet, 
Joen Brightman, William Plumstead, Henry 
Henley, James Damask, Henry Michel, William 
Lever, and John Baily — "good men and true," 
if ever twelve good men and true there were, 
came into the court-room. The sea of faces 
turned to them anxiously, and every ear was 
strained to catch the verdict. 



/Et. 26.] ALL LV PRISON. 4 1 

*' How say you," said the clerk, '' is William 
Penn guilty or not guilty ?" 

''Not guilty," said the foreman, and all the 
jurors concurred. 

The Lord Mayor immediately fined every 
man on the jury forty marks (about 27 pounds 
sterling) for contempt of court, and on Penn's 
demanding to be set at liberty on the verdict of 
the jury, immediately imposed the same fine on 
the prisoners. They all refused to pay the fines, 
and went to prison. At Penn's suggestion. 
Bushel and his fellow-jurors brought action 
against the Lord Mayor and Recorder fCr false 
imprisonment, and on their trial the Court of 
Common Pleas gave them a verdict and set the 
prisoners at liberty in open court. 

Before this ajDpeal, however, the fines of the 
two prisoners had been paid by some unknown 
friend, for they refused, as a matter of conscience, 
to pay them, and William Penn hastened from 
Newgate prison to Wanstead, the country-house 
in Essex, to the bedside of his dying father. 

This son had disappointed all the ambitious 
plans of the worldly-minded father; all his 
dreams of worldly advancement and political 
preferment had been for this boy, who would 



42 WILLIAM PENN. [1670. 

have none of them. The King had even offered 
to make Sir WiUiam a peer, with the title of 
Lord Weymouth, but this Quaker son, to whom 
the honor and title would descend, and for 
whom it was sought, refused it. But now the 
dying man turned to his first-born and said, 

" Son William, I am weary of the world ; I 
would not live my days over, could I command 
them with a wish, for the snares of life are 
greater than the fears of death." 

He sent for the King and the Duke of York, 
and begged them to continue toward his son 
the royal kindness and protection he feared he 
might sorely need in those troubled times, and 
the royal brothers pledged their favor to the 
son of their Admiral, and James certainly most 
faithfully remembered his promise to the dying 
man. And then, with his family well provided 
for under royal favor and protection, himself 
crowned with wealth and honors, the titled 
sailor looked at the times in which he lived, 
and called it vanity. 

*' Let nothing in this world," he said to the 
son whom he had turned out of doors for obey- 
ing the dictates of his conscience, *' let nothing 
in this world tempt you to wrong your con- 



^t. 26.1 THE QUAKER'S INHERITANCE. 43 

science ; so you will keep peace at home, which 
will be a feast to you in the day of trouble." 

In his last hours he talked much with this 
Quaker son, not only forgiving him, but approv- 
ing his course. 

^' Son William, if you and your friends keep to 
your plain way of preaching, and also keep to 
your plain way of living, you will make an end 
of priests to the end of the world." For him- 
self, however, he died a member of the Church 
of England. 

''Bury me near my mother; live all in love; 
shun all manner of evil. I pray God to bless 
you all, and he will bless you." 

And on the i6th of September, 1670, in the 
forty-ninth year of his age, he slept with his 
fathers. 

He left all his property, with only a life inter- 
est in the estate reserved to Lady Penn, to his 
Quaker son. The estate, with claims on the 
state for money loaned and for arrears of salary, 
was worth about ;£" 1,500 a year. And a man 
with an income of ;^ 1,500 could afford to be a 
Quaker if he wished, although there was no 
money and lots of trouble in the business at that 
time. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE BATTLE OF THE WIND-MILLS. 

" T ET me write the pamphlets of the people," 
^ said Penn, '' and I care not who writes 
their laws." So he sat down and wrote a little 
one, and called it " The People's Ancient and 
Just Liberties Asserted in the Trial of William 
Penn and William Mead at the Sessions held 
at the Old Bailey in London, on the ist, 3rd, 
4th, and 5th of September, against the Most 
Arbitrary Procedure of that Court." Some- 
how or other, the pubhcation of that pamphlet 
failed to get him into trouble or prison, and the 
gentle Quaker lived for a few weeks in dis- 
tressing tranquillity, at the end of which time a 
Baptist preacher named Ives knocked a chip 
off his shoulder by preaching a sermon reflect- 
ing upon all Quakers in general, and William 
Penn in particular. No sooner did Penn hear 
of this than he exclaimed, '^ I am a man of 
peace," and putting on his hat sallied forth to 



^t. 26. j HE LICKS A BAPTIST. 45 

find this man Ives and demand a meeting for 
the usual wind-mill. 

Rev. Mr. Ives said he was not a fighting 
Baptist himself, but he had a brother Jeremy 
whom he would put up against any Quaker 
that ever put on a pamphlet. In this en- 
counter, Penn smote Jeremy hip and thigh, 
talking nearly three hours to his enemy's one. 
The Baptist, accustomed to run by water, was 
very deficient in wind. 

Lest any incredulous Baptist should have 
any doubts regarding the result of this en- 
counter, we may say that it is indisputably 
established, on the best Quaker authority. 
Penn looked around for somebody else to fight, 
but the dissenting parsons being afraid of him, 
he fired a pamphlet at Rome, entitled '' A 
Seasonable Caveat against Popery." 

As he had now been out ot prison three 
months, it was about his time to go back, and 
toward the close of the year, when he stood 
up, according to his custom, to preach, in a 
church on Wheeler Street, a sergeant, with a 
file of soldiers, remarking that such preaching 
as that was a violation of the laws against 
cruelty to animals, arrested Penn, dragged him 



46 WILLIAM PENN, [1670. 

out of church, and took him to the Tower. 
The last time he had been in Newgate, and 
it was thought a change ot prisons would be 
beneficial. 

This time the Quaker's persecutors deter- 
mined to take no risks on a jury. He was 
tried before the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir 
John Robinson, who was the original Jack 
Robinson, and inventor of the great American 
circus. During this examination Penn refused 
to take the oath of allegiance, which was a trap 
frequently used by the magistrates against the 
Quakers, and for this, and for his preaching, he 
was sentenced to six months' imprisonment in 
Newgate. 

" Your father was my friend," said Sir John 
Robinson, before pronouncing sentence, '' and I 
have a great deal ol kindness for you." 

'' But thou hast an ill way of expressing it," 
replied Penn, and he was glad that his grand- 
father also had not been Sir John's friend, else 
that grateful magistrate had given him two 
years. 

When a corporal with a file of musqueteers 
was ordered to escort the prisoner to his apart- 
ments, " No, no, send thy lacquey," said Penn, 



^t. 27.] AN EPIDEMIC OF PAMPHLETS. 47 

*' I know the way to Newgate." Indeed he 
did. There wasn't a prison of any prominence 
in London that Penn couldn't find in the dark, 
with one hand tied behind him. 

Being in prison and unable to hold any joint 
discussions with the benighted preachers of 
other denominations, the peace-loving Quaker 
bombarded them from the grated windows of 
his dungeon-cell with pamphlets. In his peace- 
ful, unruffled way, he called the Vice-Chancellor 
of Oxford '' a poor mushroom," which must 
have been a pleasant revelation to a dignitary 
all unaccustomed to hear people speak the 
truth about him. 

Penn was not the man, in his earlier days, to 
dissemble his thoughts and feelings in print. 
When his pamphlet was out, no man ever came 
to the author to inquire into the meaning of 
any ambiguous sentence or misleading phrase. 
One of the tracts he published during this im- 
prisonment was entitled ** A Brief Reply to a 
mere Rhapsody of Lyes, Folly, and Slander," 
and it must have been some comfort to the par- 
ties assailed by it that Penn didn't know how 
to spell " lies" nearly so correctly as they could 
tell them. 



48 WILLIAM PENN. [1671. 

Then he wrote another pamphlet with the 
brief but conciliatory title, '' A Serious Apology 
for the Principles and Practices of the People 
called Quakers, against the Malicious Asper- 
sions, Erroneous Doctrines, and Horrid Blas- 
phemies of Thomas Jenner and Timothy Tay- 
lor, Two Presbyterian Preachers." This was 
very soothing to the Presbyterians, insomuch 
that grave-looking men, with broad blue 
streaks running up and down their spines, 
stood furtively behind lonely corners for 
weeks thereafter, hoping that some happy 
chance might put them in the way of wearing a 
Quaker scalp at their belts. 

One day when Penn was feeling unusually 
good and peaceful, having worn his hat for 
three consecutive days and nights and received 
a great and renewing sense of virtue and gene- 
ral pacification therefrom, he sat down and 
wrote '' Plain Dealing with a Traducing Ana- 
baptist." He fired away at Thomas Hicks, a 
Baptist preacher, with two books, *' Reason 
against Railing" and '' The Counterfeit Chris- 
tian Detected." 

Religious and theological pamphlets were not 
mild-mannered mouthings in the good old days. 



yEt. 28.] AMONG THE TEN BROECKS. 49 

Besse tells how one of William Penn's oppo- 
nents "vexed himself to death" over one of the 
gentle Quaker's savage pamphlets, being the 
original man who w^as talked to death. No 
man laid down a pamphlet in his presence, that 
Penn did not instantly see his little tract and go 
him one better. Or worse, as the case might 
be, and generally was. 

When his term of imprisonment expired, 
Penn immediately resumed his labor of preach- 
ing, and went over into Holland, which had 
been captured by the Dutch. He preached the 
new gospel of peace and good-will through that 
country and Germany. But he did not make 
many converts. The idea of wearing the hat all 
the time was pleasant to the Hollanders, but it 
did not go far enough. If Penn had insisted, in 
addition, that every man of his followers should 
wear, at all times and seasons, a green knitted 
scarf of some woollen material, and a red wors- 
ted comforter, and a white (originally white) 
v^^oollen scarf about the neck, and one canvas 
vest, one flannel vest, one woollen vest, one vest 
of sail-cloth with horn buttons, one knitted vest, 
and one vest of tanned leather, and four pairs 
of pantaloons, all the year round, Holland 



50 WILLIAM PENN. [1672. 

would have stood up as one man and said, 
" Here, at last, is a man who can interpret the 
Fathers." 

Returning from this missionary tour, Penn 
put on his hat one morning and was married in 
it to Guli Springett. Penn met this charming 
girl, several years before his marriage, in the 
little village of Chalfont St. Giles, in Bucking- 
hamshire. Guided, apparently, by his Quakerly 
instincts and that peace-loving spirit which 
breathed such an air of conciliation, and rattled 
the English language around in hard knots in 
his theological pamphlets, he married into a 
fighting family. Gulielma Springett's grand- 
father was Sir John Proud, a colonel in the ser- 
vice of the Dutch republic, who was killed at 
the siege of GroU, in Guelderland Her father, 
Sir WiUiam Springett, was a Parliamentary 
captain who fought at Edgehill and Newbury. 
He was an uncompromising, iconoclastic Puri- 
tan, and whenever he found a saint in marble or 
fresco, the saint had to go. '• Be they ever so 
rich," writes Lady Springett, '* he destroyed 
them and reserved not one for its comeliness or 
costly workmanship." He did right. It is a 
great pity he didn't find more of them. At the 



JEt. 2S.] A FIGHTING FAMILY. 5 1 

siege of Arundel Castle he was stricken with a 
fever that cost his life. Gulielma's mother, 
with wonderful fortitude and heroism, hastened 
through appaUing perils and hardships to her 
husband's side, and the gallant soldier died in 
her arms. Only a few weeks after her father's 
de^th, Gulielma Springett was born. Thus, 
from both sides, the Penn family is descended 
directly from families distinguished for courage, 
endurance, and fighting qualities, and there 
could be no better material for making good 
Quakers. 

After Sir William Springett's death, his lonely 
widow tried the gay world, and '' went after 
recreation," she says, '*into many excesses and 
vanities, as foolish mirth, carding, and dancing." 
Then she sought the consolations of religion, 
and tried, it is said, " the whole round of the 
popular sects of the day." But this is hardly 
probable or even possible, for Methuselah's self 
could not have tried them all, had he only 
lingered a month or two in each one. Finally, 
after much '' weary seeking and not finding," 
she found the proper prescription for her woes 
and heart-ache, and married the famous Isaac 
Pennington. Soon after their marriage they 



S2 WILLIAM PEMN. [1572. 

both became Quakers, and William Penn was a 
welcome visitor at Chalfont. 

And here at Chalfont, too, was Thomas Ell- 
wood ; and John Milton resided here in 1655. 
Here was the '' pretty box" Ellwood found for 
him in Chalfont St. Giles when the plague 
grew hot in the city and the blind poet felt that 
he needed a change of air and location. Here, 
too, it was that " Paradise Regained " was sug- 
gested. Milton had given to Ellwood the 
manuscript of '' Paradise Lost," asking for his 
judgment. 

*' I pleasantly said to him," writes the Quaker, 
in his Life, '' ' Thou hast said much here of 
** Paradise Lost," but what hast thou to say of 
*' Paradise Found." ? ' He made me no answer, 
but sate some time in muse; then broke off 
that discourse, and fell upon another subject. 
After the sickness was over, and the city well 
cleansed, he returned thither; and when after- 
ward I went to wait on him there, he showed 
me his second poem, called ' Paradise Re- 
gained,' and in a pleasant tone said to me, 
* This is owing to you ; for you put it into my 
head by the question you put to me at Chal- 
font, which before I had not thought of.' " So 



^t. 28.] PLEASANT DAYS IN CHALFONT. 53 

the Quakers are responsible for *' Paradise 
Regained." 

Indeed, this part of the country was a very 
hot-bed of Dissent. " General Fleetwood lived 
at the Vache, in Chalfont, and Russell on the 
opposite hill; and Mrs. Cromwell, Oliver's 
wife, and her daughters at Woodrow High 
House ; so the whole country was kept in awe 
and became exceedingly zealous and fanatical." 

The centre of the circle at Chalfont St. Giles 
was Guli Springett, young, beautiful in form 
and feature, highly accomplished, and a bril- 
liant musician. She had many suitors ; Thomas 
Ell wood himself was, as the quaint chronicler 
of the time states it, " clean gone" on Guli ; but 
when William Penn came along, in that snuff- 
colored coat, long weskit, and phenomenal hat, 
the rest of the boys had no kind of show. 
William fell hopelessly in love on sight. They 
drove out in a buggy with a seat scarce wide 
enough for one, and every time he went to the 
house the roomy pockets of that wide-skirted 
snuff-colored coat were vast magazines of gum- 
drops and caramels. Oft by the dim religious 
light of a parlor lamp that turned down, Guli 
sat and coaxed him to raise a mustache. The 



54 WILLIAM PENN. [1672. 

Penningtons kept a parrot at that time, and one 
day in early spring, when the nights were still 
frosty and sharp, that miserable bird, which 
had been dozing all the previous evening in the 
parlor, did nothing the whole day long but 
wander about the house saying, '■' Oh, William, 
your nose is cold as ice ! William, your nose is 
cold as ice!" It was the parrot's last joke. 
Next morning it was found with its neck 
wrung, and it was supposed, in view of its 
strange remarks, to have died of cerebral aber- 
ration. Hsec fabula docets that reformers are 
very much like other people. 

Guli Springett became Mrs. William Penn 
that spring, and until the following autumn 
Penn remained at his home in Rickmansworth, 
Hertfordshire, writing no pamphlets, abusing 
no one, and only preaching occasional sermons. 
It does not appear that he called any Baptist 
preacher a liar all this summer, and he ran no 
unhappy Presbyterian through with a pam- 
phlet. 

But this quiet home life, with its simple 
pleasures and domestic joys, was too slow for a 
peace-loving Quaker, and soon Penn called for 
his two-handed pen with the terrible name, put 



^f 28.] DESICCATED MISSIONARY. 55 

on his trusty ink-well, and sallied forth with a 
pamphlet that went singing- through the star- 
tled air like a hat full of hot shot. He began to 
have trouble with his own people now. Qua- 
kerism had not then attained its present state 
of perfection, and there, were some Quakers 
who Quaked not wisely but too much, Quake 
they never so Quakely. 

Two of these enthusiastic converts set off to 
Rome to convert the Pope, with many yeas 
and nays and much hat. The Holy See, with 
that promptness and firmness which was a pro- 
minent characteristic of the Roman Church, 
turned in and converted the missionaries. John 
Love was sent to the Inquisition, and by the 
use of new and improved machinery, that had 
just been put ^ in the torture-chamber at great 
expense by the management, was converted 
into a material that looked like a doubtful com- 
promise between sawdust and sausage-meat, 
while John Perrot was sent to an asylum for 
the insane, as the preliminary step to his con- 
version into a lunatic. 

Perrot was afterward set at liberty, and re- 
turned to England, where he was more trouble 
to his brother Quakers than all their enemies. 



56 WILLIAM PENN. [1672. 

He advocated the hat doctrine with a broad- 
ness that startled all good Friends, claiming 
that the hat should not be removed even in 
prayer, except by divine revelation. Penn was 
alarmed. There was no telling to what lengths 
this hat business might not go. By and by 
some earnest brother would claim that it was 
wicked, impious, and blasphemous for a man 
to take off his hat when he went to bed ; then 
it would be argued that a man should wear his 
hat when he died, that he might be buried in 
it ; then it would presently follow that the wo- 
men should wear hats like the men, same style 
of hats, just as women of all other denomi- 
nations wear to-day ; then the next step would 
be to have all hats made not only precisely 
alike, but of one uniform unvarying size, so 
that all ages, classes, and conditions ol men, 
women, children, and babies should wear a 7I 
hat, and if the hat didn't fit it was the fault of 
the head. Evidently, it was time to sit down 
on the hat, before the hat fell, like a beaver 
extinguisher, upon the Quakers and their doc- 
trines. 

A church meeting was called, the matter was 
kindly but sensibly discussed, and Perrot was 



yEt. 28.] PVAJ^S OF THE TALKING THINGS. 5/ 

fired out of the society, his license was revoked, 
and he was forbidden to Quake any more under 
pain of prosecution for infringement of copy- 
ripfht. Perrot drowned his sorrow and morti- 
fication in a flowing pamphlet, called " The 
Spirit of the Hat," and Penn joyously mauled 
him with a bigger one, " The Spirit of Alex- 
ander the Coppersmith." For some time there- 
after he bombarded the expunged Quaker with 
pamphlets, until Perrot wished he was back in 
the Roman insane asylum. 

Charles issued his " Declaration of Indul- 
gence" this year, and the oppressive penal laws 
against all non-conformists being suspended, 
the dissenters had plenty of time to fight one 
another, and the pale air was streaked with 
hostile pamphlets, until it wasn't safe for a man 
to go out of doors without a pamphlet um- 
brella. Many of these pamphlets were very 
valuable, bringing as high as 2\ and even 3 
cents a pound at the paper-mill. Penn made a 
desperate effort to write two pamphlets to 
every other man's one. This was impossible, 
but Penn came as near to it as any man could. 
His tongue was not permitted to rust in these 
stirring times. He had a long and exciting 



58 WILLIAM PENN. [1672. 

wind-mill with the Baptists, to which six thou- 
sand persons listened, and the meeting well- 
nigh broke up in a tremendous row over the 
question, " If Christ was the inner Light, where 
was his manhood ?" 

It was customary in those days for some one 
to get hurt with a bench whenever there was a 
religious discussion, but beyond a great deal of 
tumultuous talking and irrepressible clamor, 
and breaking down the doors and tearing up 
the seats, no harm was done on this occasion. 
The Quakers came off victorious at all points 
in this contest,* while the Baptists, as usual, 
routed their broad-brim opponents, horse, foot, 
and dragoons, f 

Penn also had a public discussion with the 
celebrated Thomas Baxter, who regarded the 
Quakers " as so many lost people," and desired 
to preach to them '' that they might once hear 
what could be said for their recovery." The 
discussion lasted seven hours, before an audi- 
ence including noblemen, knights, and clergy- 
men of the established church. Penn whipped; 
so did Thomas Baxter. 

■^ Quaker histories and memoirs. 

f Baptist and other non-Quaker authorities and narratives. 



JEl 29.] THE WIFE'S INFLUENCE. 59 

The non-conformists had very little respite 
from persecution under the Declaration of In- 
dulgence, and they occupied all that time in 
wrangling with one another. And while they 
were at it hammer and tongs, the disgraceful 
Test Act was passed, and petty magistrates and 
tyrants began to make it so warm for them 
they had no time to denounce one another as 
worse than heathen, or -to break the doors and 
benches of the meeting-houses. 

Penn continued to write pamphlets, but they 
were milder in tone, and could be laid on an 
oak plank without blistering it. This modera- 
tion is largely due to the gentle influence of the 
loving Guli, and many of Penn's old adver- 
saries wished he had married ten years earlier. 
At this timg he writes to Justice Fleming, a 
magistrate who was filling all the prisons in his 
jurisdiction with Quakers, '' I know no religion 
which destroys courtesy, civility, and kind- 
ness." Penn was beginning to imbibe the true 
Quaker spirit, and it was even a comparatively 
safe thing now to shake a pamphlet at him, if 
the man was a good swift runner and the fence 
wasn't too far away. 

Penn had been five years away from court. 



6o WILLIAM PENN. [1673. 

He visited Whitehall at this time, with his old 
friend and fellow-sufferer, Captain William 
Mead, to plead for the liberation of George 
Fox, who was passing the greater portion of 
his life in prison. Penn was warmly welcomed 
by James, who carried his business to the Kin^, 
and secured the release of Fox. James mildly 
rebuked his ward for staying away so long, and 
told him whenever he wanted anything to 
come around. " Don't knock," he said, ''come 
right in like one of the family. You'll find the 
hat-rack in the hall." 



CHAPTER IV. 

WILLIAM BUYS A FARM. 

AMERICA was the refuge of the non-conform- 
ists. Six weeks of sea-sickness was prefera- 
ble to six months' imprisonment or five minutes' 
beheading. The wild Indians were kinder and 
less to be dreaded than the English magistrates 
and the preachers of the established church. 
Penn had heard a great deal about America, es- 
pecially while he was in Holland, and colonies 
of Quakers had already gone out to the land of 
the free, settHng in Jamaica, along the Delaware, 
and in New England. He -was first interested 
in the affairs of that portion of New Jersey 
which then included the region lying between 
the Hudson and the Delaware. It belonged to 
Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, having 
been given to them by a man who didn't own a 
foot of it. As it cost him nothing, it occurred 
to Lord Berkeley that he could make a good 
thing by selling his half to the Quakers, and as 



^2 WILLIAM PENN. [1676. 

the Quakers weren't getting something for no- 
thing in those days, they were glad enough to 
buy anything when they could get it cheap. 

So John Fen wick, agent and trustee of Ed- 
ward Byllynge, bought half of the state of New 
Jersey, including all the dips, spurs, leads, an- 
gles, and sinuosities thereunto appertaining, 
with all apple-jack privileges and mosquito 
ranges, for five thousand dollars. This was 
more than it was worth, but the purchasers 
contemplated getting even on the Indians. Fen- 
wick and Byllynge quarrelled over the bargain. 
Friend Fenwick brought in a bill for commis- 
sions which just about absorbed all the profits 
and most of the land. Friend Byllynge said he 
would take the commissions himself, and let his 
agent have the land. But Friend Fenwick said 
he was a poor real-estate agent who couldn't get 
out of a land-deal more money than the seller 
and more land than the buyer. The matter was 
finally referred to William Penn, and this wise 
arbitrator managed to reconcile the two warring 
Quakers. Friend Fenwick at first demurred to 
the arbitration, Avhich gave Friend Byllynge 
quite or even more than half the land he had 
bought and paid for, and the Real Estate Agents' 



JEt. 32.] D/^OrS INTO POLITICS. 63 

Mutual Benevolent and Protective Association 
supported the agent, and said such an unusual 
and greedy allowance to a grasping purchaser 
was unjust and unbusinesslike, and could not be 
accepted as a precedent. Fenwick and a num- 
ber of Quaker colonists sailed for New Jersey, 
and Byllynge remained in England, over- 
whelmed by debts, and was compelled at last 
to make an assignment; his right and title in 
New Jersey was made over to three trustees — 
Gawen Lowrie of London, Nicholas Lucas of 
Hertford, and William Penn. 

Penn at once made arrangements with Sir 
George Carteret for a division of the province, 
and on July i, 1676, East New Jersey, or all the 
province northeast of a line from Little Egg har- 
bor to a poii^t on the most northern branch of 
the Delaware river, latitude 41° 40', passed to 
Carteret, and West New Jersey to the trustees 
of Byllynge— the first great purchase made by 
the Quakers in America. 

Penn was now at hberty to put into practice 
his dreams of a model state, his ideas of a free 
government. He prepared a constitution for the 
new territory, by which he secured the rights 
of free worship ; every man of mature age and 



^4 WILLIAM PENN. [1676. 

free from crime was declared an elector, but 
woman suffrage was not even hinted at ; a secret 
ballot was provided for, thus avoiding bulldoz- 
ing by factory superintendents, section foremen, 
and ward bosses; juries were made interpreters 
of the law and had the sole right to pronounce 
verdicts, and although it was and is a very sim- 
pie word to pronounce, yet the juries, from 
Penn's time to our own day, have pronounced 
some that were fearful and wonderful ; no man 
could be imprisoned for debt, although a collec- 
tor was permitted to chase a man all over town 
and follow him to dinner with a bill, and dun 
him in a crowd, twenty times a day, which was 
far more distracting and annoying than a quiet 
imprisonment. West Jersey was divided into 
one hundred parts. Fenwick immediately took 
ten parts for his commission, and became the 
pioneer American land-grabber; Byllynge's 
Yorkshire creditors took ten more in settlement 
of their claims, and the colony v/ent into busi- 
ness with what was left. The members of the 
legislature were paid one shilling a day during 
the session of the Assembly. 'They come 
high," said Penn, "but we must have 'em." 
The province was a success from the start. 



.Et. 32. j THE QUAKER'S USUAL LUCK. 65 

The doors weren't open ten minutes before the 
house was crowded, standing-room all gone, and 
the last man who got in had to leave his cane 
outside. Several hundred persons went over 
this year. In March, 230 Friends sailed in the 
Kent, and King Charles visited the ship and 
blessed the colonists before they sailed. It did 
not sink the ship. ^ 

The good ship Kent reached New York in 
August, and found Fenwick in prison, of course. 
A prison without a Quaker in it in those days 
would have been the play of "• Hamlet" with 
Hamlet left out. Fenwick had denied Gover- 
nor Andros's right to collect customs duties and 
other taxes, and Governor Andros had cast the 
peaceful Fenwick into prison, to prove the 
legality of his^ acts. The new-comers acted 
like prudent Quakers. They kept out of quar- 
rels with Sir Edmund Andros, and let him and 
the colonj of East Jersey wrangle and discuss 
politics while they attended to their knitting ; 
so West Jersey prospered as East Jersey quar- 
relled and got into trouble and debt, until in a 
few years (1682) the Friends saw their opportu- 

* The blessing of a man like Charles should have been stuffed 
and kept under glass, as a curiosity. 



66 WILLIAM PENN, [1677. 

nity, and ten West Jersey proprietors, William 
Penn being one of them, bought East Jersey. 
The Friends made themselves solid with the In- 
dians at the start, and the Indians were pretty 
friendly, for Indians. 

The affairs of the Friends in America at this 
time were lovely, and the goose warbled at an 
unusual altitude, and, taking advantage of the 
general peaceful aspect of all things Quakerly, 
Penn, leaving his family in their new home at 
Worminghurst, sailed for Holland with George 
Fox and Robert Barclay, and held large meet- 
ings at most of the towns along their route. 
This missionary tour was eminently success- 
ful. Penn wrote to England that '' the Gospel 
was preached, the dead were raised, and the liv- 
ing were comforted." 

The Quakers were warmly welcomed at Her- 
werden by the Electress Elizabeth, daughter of 
Frederick, Prince Palatine of the Rhine. She 
was a sister of Prince Rupert, Admiral Penn's 
old enemy and rival. Between Rupert's sister 
and William Penn a warm friendship existed to 
the day of her death. At Kirchheim, Penn's 
preaching and his description of the new-world 
refuge for the persecuted both fell on listening 



JEt. 33.] A SEI^^IOUS COUNTESS, 67 

ears and eager hearts ; and the first colonists in 
America who declared it unlawful for Chris- 
tians to buy and hold negro slaves were the 
Quaker emigrants who came to Pennsylvania 
from Kirchheim. 

Having been informed by the Princess Eliza- 
beth that the young and beautiful Countess von 
Falckenstein und Bruch, living near Mulheim, 
was "serious," the missionaries went to that 
town. They were warned that the Graf was far 
more serious than his beautiful daughter, and 
that he would make it very serious for any mis- 
sionary he caught hanging around. The merry 
Graf, indeed, had a weakness for setting his 
dogs, of which he kept a large and unruly as- 
sortment, on unsuspecting strangers, and oft- 
times he had^ his soldiers beat the wayfarer who 
strayed into the castle grounds. These things 
made the missionaries seriously incline to hover 
around the orchard, rather than go up to the 
front door, sending word to the Countess, in the 
mean time, that they were as near to her bower 
as their exaggerated respect for a strange dog 
and an irritable father would permit. In about 
an hour back came their messenger with word 
from the Countess that she would be glad to see 



68 WILLIAM PENN. [1677. 

them, but not at the house, as Pa was always 
nosing around. She thought it would be best 
to cross the river and meet at the house of her 
friend, the clergyman. 

But while the missionaries talked with the 
messenger, the Graf himself, with his attend- 
ants, rode forth from the castle, and began to 
ask them questions. He was not pleased with 
the strangers. He was indignant because they 
refused to take off their hats, and when they 
said they wore them in the presence of their 
own king, the Graf intimated that that was all 
well enough in England, and was about the 
treatment a king of England deserved, but they 
did those things better in Mulheim. He then 
called a file of soldiers, who marched the mis- 
sionaries out into a thick forest, got them lost 
in the dark, and then, presenting them with the 
freedom of the woods, turned them loose and 
left them. They got back to Duysburgh about 
ten o'clock, but the sentinels would not let them 
in, and there were no houses outside the walls. 
So they wrapped the drapery of the sidewalk 
about them, and lay down to pleasant night- 
mares. 

During the journey to Wesel on this mission- 



JEt. 33.] STUMPS THE STATE FOR SIDNEY. 69 

ary tour, Penn was greatly annoyed because 
some persons in the wagon in which they trav- 
elled indulged in vain and "profane" conversa- 
tion during the day, and then sang Luther's 
hymns at evening. He wanted them to give up 
either family prayers or swearing, he didn't 
seem to care very much which. However, it 
may be the hymn-singing reprobates were not 
so shockingly wicked after all. " Profane" con- 
versation as defined by Penn was not what is 
called profane^ to-day. It is difficult, indeed, 
to understand just what the gentle William did 
mean by "' profane" language. Idle talk about 
the crops, predictions as to the weather, politics, 
conundrums, and all manner of jokes were prob- 
ably classed as profane and vain babbling by 
this good man, who denounced the sermons of 
Presbyterian preachers as *' horrid blasphem- 
ies." William Penn was a good man, but occa- 
sionally he would rake with the teeth up. 

Returning to England, Penn went into poli- 
tics for a season. Algernon Sidney, his bosom 
friend, and the republican from whose life and 

*I.e. that energetic and immoral adornment of colloquial 
speech with expletives and objurgations generally included in 
Arkansas under the designation of "cussin' and swarin'." 



70 WILLIAM PENN. [1679. 

teachings Penn had imbibed many poHtical 
ideas, was a candidate for Parliament, standing 
for the constituency of Guilford. Penn went 
into the campaign with a hat full of pamphlets ; 
there was nothing like pamphlets for Penn. 
One of these had the tone of a modern cam- 
paign document. It began, '' All is at stake !" 
— which meant that there was a chance that 
Sidney might not be elected. Then he went 
into the canvass in live earnest. He stumped 
the district for his friend. He *' viewed with 
alarm" to-night, and he "pointed with pride" 
the next night. He denounced the machine, 
and he deprecated '' bossism," and said the 
watchword was "■ reform." Csesarism loomed 
like a black and awful cloud, no bigger than a 
man's ear, upon the horizon. Sidney was the 
friend of the poor man, and the champion of the 
people against monopolies; he was for cheap 
money and plenty of it. He was in favor of a 
revenue for tariff only. Down with the third 
term! Penn's eloquence prevailed, and Sidne}/ 
received a majority of the suffrages, but the 
Court knew something worth two of that, and 
the commonwealth candidate was promptly 
counted out. 



^t. 37.] PRESENTS HIS LITTLE BILL. 71 

Once more Algernon Sidney went in ; this 
time he stood for the town of Kent, and the 
Court put up his brother Henry against him. 
Again Algernon was elected, and a second time 
the royalists counted him out. Disgusted with 
politics and England, Penn turned his face and 
his thoughts toward America. 

The Government owed him, in claims in- 
herited from his father, about ;^ 16,000—'' equal 
to more than three times that amount of present 
money." Indignant at the treacherous manner 
in which his friend had been treated, Penn felt 
like foreclosing his little mortgage and forcing 
the Government into the hands of a receiver. 
But he decided instead to take out his judgment 
in unoccupied Crown lands in America. That 
suited everybody. It was the only way the 
King could or would ever pay his debt ; it was 
the only way Penn could ever get a dollar of 
his account. So in consideration of all the 
claims he held against the Government, and in 
further consideration of two beaver-skins an- 
nually, and one fifth part of all the gold and 
silver* that might be mined in the new pro- 

* It would have been money in Charles' pocket had he stipu- 
lated for petroleum instead of gold. But his most gracious 



'^'^ WILLIAM PENN. {;i68i. 

vince, the King granted Penn a territory of 
40,000 square miles, and the charter, drawn up 
bj Chief Justice Worth, was signed March 4, 
1681, in order to have it go into effect on In- 
auguration-day. The Merry Monarch, when he 
made Penn a deed of the territory and paid the 
notary, said: 

" Here, I am doing well granting all this wild 
land to such a fighting man as you. But you 
must promise entire toleration to all members 
of the Church of England, and never take to 
scalping." 

And Penn assured the King that he most 
assuredly would, and indeed and double he 
wouldn't. It was all right as to toleration. 
Members of the Church of England were toler- 
ated,* barely, but the scalping proviso didn't 
hold quite a hundred years, for in 1 764 a grandson 
of WilHam Penn offered a bounty of $134 for 
every adult male Indian's scalp, and $50 for every 
female Indian's scalp.f But this grandson was 

majesty didn't know a "spouter" from a " dus^^^V^^i^^^^ 
not the sudden ways of a "wild-cat." 

* Which must have flattered the Episcopalians immensely. 

t The woman's rights party fought fiercely against this unfair 
discrimination in the price of scalps, claiming that a squaw's 
scalp had the longest and finest hair, and should be rated as 
high as a man's. 



^t. 37-] THE CHRISTENING SERVICE. 'Jl 

not a Quaker. And there had arisen a tribe of 
Indians, also, which knew not Penn, and didn't 
stop to ask a pale-face, when they *' got the drop 
on him," whether he was a Pennsylvanian or 
pitched his tepee in the wilds of New Jersey. 

When Penn appeared to receive his charter, 
he came into the royal presence in his usual 
easy manner with his hat on and his hands in 
his pockets. Charles at once removed his own 
hat. 

" Keep on your hat, young- man," said Penn, 
"keep on your hat, and people won't know 
you're bald." 

** It is the custom of this place," the King re- 
plied, " for only one person to remain covered 
at a time." 

** Queer custom," said Penn, " but I don't lay 
my hat around loose in a strange house unless I 
get a check for it. I've travelled, I have." 

Penn had decided to call his province New 
Wales, but the King, who seems to have had 
some sense in the matter of names, and did not 
wish the new continent to be sprinkled over 
with a junk-shop assortment of second-hand 
names that had already been in use for centuries, 
christened it Pennsylvania — for which, if it isn't 



74 WILLIAM PENN. 



[i6Si. 



too late, God save the King! Penn objected 
to the prefix of his own name, and suggested 
plain, unadorned Sylvania, but the monarch in- 
sisted on the Penn, against which the Quaker's 
modesty still protested. A reporter who was 
present suggested that, in compliment to the 
profession, he might spell it Pencilvania, but 
WiUiam conveniently failed to hear him, and 
the wretched scrivener was cast into the deepest 
dungeon beneath the castle moat. 

A duplicate copy of the original charter, writ- 
ten on rolls of strong parchment, in Old English 
text, every line underscored with red ink, the 
borders gorgeously emblazoned with heraldic 
devices, and a portrait of his most gracious and 
distressingly ugly majesty at the top of the first 
page, now two hundred years old— the charter, 
not his majesty— is still preserved in the office 
of the Secretary of State, at Harrisburg, Penn- 
sylvania. 

Penn and Algernon Sidney drew up the con- 
stitution. '' Give a province a good strong 
constitution," said Penn, '' and it will never cost 
you a dollar for a hver-pad," The constitution 
recognized liberty of conscience, and right of 
suffrage for " every inhabitant, artificer, or other 



^t. 37.] THE RUSH BEGINS. 75 

resident that pays scot and lot to the govern- 
ment." Compulsory attendance at church was 
not enforced ; if a man wanted to stay home and 
sleep all the morning or mend his trout-rod in 
the back yard, all right. Lying was punished 
as a crime, so that very few lawyers went to 
Pennsylvania in Penn's time. Going to the 
theatre and getting drunk were placed in the 
same category ; as also were card-playing, bull- 
baiting, and cock-fighting. Trial by jury was 
established, an Indian to be allowed six Indians 
on a jury in all cases where his interests were 
involved. As the Indians never read the news- 
papers, they made the best of jurymen, and 
have served the courts as models of proper and 
acceptable jurors down to the present time. 
Only two crimes, murder and treason, were 
punishable by death. There was no gallows in 
Pennsylvania so long as Penn Hved ; but then 
Penn didn't have the Mollie Maguires to pacify. 
Penn advertised his land at forty shillings per 
hundred acres, and a little quit-rent, and the 
tide of immigration set in. Franz Pastorius 
came over at once with a company of Germans, 
and bought 15,000 acres, and invented the Penn- 
sylvania-Dutch language, of which anybody 



76 WILLIAM PENN. [1681. 

can, without any instruction, understand three 
fifths, and nobody can understand the other two 
fifths. 

Three vessels came over during this year. 
One of them was frozen in at Chester, then the 
Swedish settlement of Upland, and here the 
immigrants passed the winter, living in caves 
which they dug in the river-bank.* Colonel 
Markham, Penn's cousin and lieutenant, came 
out to take charge of the colony. He also 
brought a long letter from Penn, to read to the 
Indians, to see how they would stand that sort 
of thing. The reading was not attended with 
any fatal results. 

In the mean time Penn was settling the clash- 
ing interests of proprietorship between himself, 
the Duke of York, and Lord Baltimore. These 
differences were temporarily adjusted, as usual 
in these little deals, in Penn's favor and to his 
great advantage. The thermometer was a foot 
and a half below zero when Penn missed the 
train. But this adjustment did not stay ad- 
justed, and eventually Penn got left. 

*Why they did not go to the hotels, of which there are 
several in Chester, or go up to Philadelphia by rail, does not 
appear. It is very probable the immigrants were out of money 
and were waiting at Chester for remittances. 



^t. 37.J PENN PICTURES. 77 

This year his mother died. Penn's affection- 
ate nature so keenly felt this blow that for seve- 
ral days he was ill and unable to bear the light, 
and it was many weeks before his usual habits 
of activity returned to him. But when the edge 
of the great Quaker's sorrow was blunted, and 
life and its duties called him from his grief, all 
his heart went out again to the " Holy Experi- 
ment," his model republic in the new world, his 
colony where the government and the people, 
the law and religion, should go hand in hand, 
mutually dependent and mutually helpful. 
And the sound of the Indian wigwam was 
heard in the distance. 



CHAPTER V. 

GO WEST, YOUNG MAN. 

'' pRIEND WILLIAM," remarked the Merry 
Monarch, if the historian of the Third 
Reader is to be credited,* " I suppose you are 
going to make sure the Indians will not shed a 
drop of your Quaker blood, by remaining in 
England, where it is far more Hkely to be shed 
by the headsman of the established church." 

" Which," replied the Quaker chieftain, with 
mild sarcasm, '^ is where thee is away off thy 
base. I am even now ready to sail, and am 
come to bid thee ta-ta." 

"What! venture yourself among the sava- 
ges of North America? Why, man, what se- 
curity have you that you'll not be in their war- 
kettle in two hours after setting foot upon their 
shores?" 

"The best security in the world," replied 
Penn, calmly,—'' a first mortgage on every foot 

* Which he is not. 



^t. 38.] THE SCIENCE OF INDIAN-TAMING. 79 

of ground my particular savages own ; a regular 
cut-throat, that I can shut down on them any 
time I please." 

'' Nixie weeden," replied the King, " I have no 
idea of any security against those cannibals but 
in a regiment of good soldiers with their mus- 
kets and bayonets. And I tell you beforehand, 
with all my good-will to you and your family, 
now there is no more prospect for my borrow- 
ing money of you, I'll not send a single soldier 
with you. If things keep on as they are now, I 
shall need them all myself pretty suddenly." 

*' I want none.of thy soldiers," answered Penn, 
pleasantly ; " if I need troops, I can call out the 
State Fencibles and wipe the ground with any- 
thing that ever wore a scarlet coat. But I de- 
pend upon something better than thy soldiers." 

The King wanted to know if he meant peace 
commissioners. 

" Why, no, I depend upon themselves," replied 
Penn, " on their own moral sense and inward 
goodness." 

" That's all well enough," rephed the King, 
" but Phil Sheridan says the only good Indian 
is a dead one." 

*'Phil Sheridan is a man of war," said the 



80 WILLIAM PENN. [1682. 

Quaker. "When thy subjects first went to 
North America they found these poor people 
the fondest and kindest creatures in the world. 
Every day they would watch for them to come 
ashore, and hasten to meet them and feast them 
on their best fish and venison, and corn, and 
oysters so big that it took two men to swallow 
a small one. In return for this hospitality of 
the savages, as we call them, thy subjects, termed 
Christians, seized their best hunting-grounds and 
opened them up to preemption under the Home- 
stead and Bounty acts, located mining-claims 
all over their mountains, and, in open disregard 
of all treaty obhgations, forced them upon 
wretched alkali reservations not fit for a goose- 
pasture, until in desperation these much-injured 
people followed Captain Jack to the lava-beds 
and rode over the border with Sitting Bull, and 
went into the human-hair business with limited 
capital but unbounded enthusiasm and enter- 
prise." 

" Well, then, I hope, friend William, you will 
not complain when * Old - Man-Down-on-the- 
Quakers' hfts your flowing locks and makes 
you at once a subject for the hatter, the wig- 
maker, and the coroner." 



^t. 38.] THE RIGHT OF MIGHT. 8 1 

"Mighty clear of the murder," said Penn. 
" When I come back to England I shall have 
hair of my own to sell. " 

'* In your mind you will," replied the King, 
with his ready wit, " but I suppose you mean to 
jump their hunting-grounds, like the rest of us ?" 

''Yes, but not by any swindling act of Con- 
gress or miserable land-grab," said the honest 
Friend ; " I mean to buy their lands of them." 

The King looked at William in a tone of as- 
tonishment for a moment, then he compressed 
his lips firmly, bulged out his cheeks, protruded 
his chin, and sank down on a cracker-box, smit- 
ing his knees and swaying to and fro with sup- 
pressed laughter. When he recovered from this 
burst of royal merriment, he said, 

" Why, man, you have bought their lands al- 
ready, of me !" 

"I know that," replied the gentle Quaker, 
" but that was because I knew I could never get 
a dollar of my just claims out of thee in any 
other way. I only paid for thy good-will. What 
right had thee to the land ?" 

''Right?" exclaimed his most gracious ma- 
jesty,— "the cleanest title you ever saw on 
parchment; runs clear back to a government 



82 WILLIAM PENN. [1682. 

patent. Here: beginning at the northeastern 
bound of the Ashburton treaty, thence running 
southwest to a port in Key West, thence west- 
erly to a tree at the mouth of the Rio Grande, 
thence across the country and so on up and 
around back to the place of beginning. You 
find a flaw in that title, and I'll give you a stock- 
farm in Iowa. Of course it's my land. I dis- 
covered it. Or at least some other man did, and 
I took it away from him." 

" The right of discovery," said Penn, " doesn't 
hold good in this court. Suppose, friend Charles, 
some canoe-loads of these Indians should cross 
the sea and discover thy islands of Great Britain ? 
What would thee do, sell out or vacate?" 

To which the King very truthfully replied 
that he would sell out his whole kingdom any 
time to the first man that bid high enough, and 
if the Indians were big enough and strong 
enougli he would vacate by the first steamer 
that sailed for France. *' That is the kind of 
monarch I am," he added, "but you needn't tell 
people I said so. But," he continued earnestly, 
** I have heard the Indians are great thieves, 
and will steal anything they can carry away, if 
it doesn't grow fast to the ground. Look after 



^t. 38] A FURLONG OF ADVICE. 83 

your doors and keep your hand on your 
lock." 

" What lock ?" asked the unsuspecting Friend. 

"Scalp-lock!" shouted the witty monarch in 
a burst of merriment, — "tra-la-la, William !" 

" See you later," muttered the discomfited 
Quaker, as he followed his precious hat out of 
the royal apartments. 

Penn bade his family an affectionate farewell, 
and wrote his wife and children a long letter, 
containing nearly four thousand words, which 
filled them plumb full of good advice and com- 
mercial and moral and practical instruction. 
He bade Mrs. Penn " be diligent in meetings 
for worship and business; stir up thyself and 
others herein ;" '* make thy family matters easy 
to thee ;" to have regular hours '' for work, 
walking, and meals," and "grieve not thyself 
with careless servants ; rather pay them and let 
them go," — which shows that the housekeeper's 
struggle with the queen of the kitchen was rag- 
ing and wearing out mothers and wives and 
breaking crystal and chipping fine china and 
scouring silver with sand and yellow soap even 
in the wealthy families away back in Penn's 
time. " Cast up thy income, and I beseech thee 



84 WILLIAM PENN. [1682. 

to live low and sparingly till my debts are paid.' ^ 
He lays out her amusements for her. '' Guard 
against encroaching friendships, . . . and let thy 
children, good meetings, and Friends be the 
pleasure of thy life."f He bade her "■ spare no 
cost" in the education of the children, " for by 
such parsimony all is lost that is saved." '' Let 
my children be husbandmen and housewives." 
He preferred they should have a private tutor, 
who could toot in the house, '' rather than send 
them to schools," where they would learn too 
many things he didn't want them to know. % 
He bade his children "obey, love, and cherish 
your dear mother ;" if they marry, to do so with 
her consent. " I charge you, help the poor and 
needy ; let the Lord have a voluntary share of 
your income for the poor, both in your own 
society and others." There was never anything 
small or narrow about William Penn. § " Love 
not money or the world," he told them ; '* use 



* In many respects Penn was very like other men. 

\ Once in a while she might go out to see her grandmother's 
grave, or one of the children might have a tooth pulled, or some 
innocent fun like that, but no excessive levity and vanity was 
permitted. 

X Which they would find out anyhow. 

§ Not even his hat. 



^t. 38.] SCOURGED BY THE SMALL-POX. 85 

them only, and they will serve you." '' In mak- 
ing friends, consider well first, and when you 
are fixed, be true, not wavering- in reports, nor 
deserting in affliction." "As for you who are 
Ifkely to be concerned in the government of 
Pennsylvania, I do charge you that you be 
lowly, diligent, and tender, fearing God, loving 
the people, and hating covetousness. Keep upon 
the square." * " Finally, my dear children, love 
one another and your dear relations on both 
sides, and take care to preserve tender affection 
in your children to each other, often marrying 
within themselves, so as it be without the 
bounds forbidden in God's law, that they may 
not grow out of kindred and cold as Strangers."t 
On the 1st of September he sailed in the good 
ship Welcome With one hundred passengers, 
nearly all Friends, and his old neighbors of 
Sussex County. They enjoyed a very miser- 
able voyage. It lasted six weeks, and the small- 

*Can it be possible that William Penn was the man who 
killed Morgan ? It seems that he was a Mason and a goat- rider. 

f Penn realized how much easier it would be for his boys to 
marry their cousins, and arrange matters with their uncles, 
whose peculiarities they knew, and with whose dogs they were on 
friendly and speaking terms, than to meet strange fathers-in- 
law and brindle terriers that they knew not of, and to whom 
an mtroduction would be fraught with perilous formalities. 



86 WILLIAM PENN, [1682. 

pox broke out. Of the hundred passengers 
thirty died at sea, and before the voyage was 
half completed every passenger on the Welcome 
was sick. For thirty hours, on one occasion, the 
burial service never ceased. With no fear and 
no thought for himself, Penn moved through 
the dark, narrow cabins, crowded with death 
and suffering, and the brightest qualities of his 
manhood and Christianity shone forth in the 
presence of that loathsome pestilence.* At 
length, after the horrors of disease and death 
had made the weeks drag their weary lengths 
along like slow-moving months, the Welcome 
dropped anchor off Newcastle, and the Dutch 
and Swedes welcomed the new Governor most 
cordially when he stepped ashore. 

Having hired a hall, Penn unloaded a long 
speech upon the defenceless inhabitants, a cus- 
tom that prevails with American Governors 
even unto the present day, with the exceptions, 
indeed, of the Governors of North Carolina and 
South Carolina, one of whom is reported as 
being very brief but very pointed in his remarks, 
while the speech of the other has never been 
reported. 

* This was before the discovery of vaccination. 



JEt. 38.] M^J/AT'S IN A NAME? 8/ 

The commissions of all the magistrates at 
Newcastle were renewed, whereupon the incum- 
bents passed resolutions advocating civil-service 
reform and endorsing the administration, while 
the citizens who had expected commissions and 
didn't get them viewed with alarm the growing 
power of the " machine," and grieved to see 
that the new administration was making itself 
solid with the " bosses." 

Penn then went to Chester, where he must 
have been surprised to see the Crozier Theo- 
logical Seminary for Baptists, and the Pennsyl- 
vania MiHtary Academy.* The town was then 
settled by Swedes, who called their village Up- 
land. Penn, however, changed the name to 
Chester, because that was the town his friend 
Pearson came^from. The wonderful strength 
of will and marvellous unselfishness in Penn's 
character is shown in the fact that he refrained 
from changing the name to Pearsonborough 
or Pennholder or Williamville, after the usual 
American plan. 

While he waited in Chester the Assembly of 
Pennsylvania held its first session, which lasted 

* As he says nothing about them, it is probable that he didn't 
see them. 



88 WILLIAM PENN. [1682. 

only four days. This brevity was owing in great 
measure to an excellent rule adopted by both 
houses, "that none speak but once before the 
question is put, nor after, but once, and that 
superfluous and tedious speeches may be stopped 
by the Speaker." * 

Among other important laws that they passed 
after adopting Penn's constitution was one that 
every child twelve years of age, rich or poor, 
should be instructed in some useful trade or 
skill, all work being honorable, and idleness a 
shame. 

Having founded a great state with less noise 
and talk than is usually occupied in organizing 
a debating society, the Assembly adjourned, and 
the honorable members collected their per diem 
and went back to their farms at their own ex- 
pense, the duty of distributing annual passes to 
the members having not yet occurred to the 
Pennsylvania Railroad. 

After the adjournment of the Assembly 
Penn visited the Governors of New York and 
Maryland, delivering a few sermons here and 
there, as occasion offered. He was well satis- 

*This rule is not now in force in the legislative assemblies 
of the United States. 



JEt. 38.] A MODEL EMIGRATION CIRCULAR. 89 

fied with his own colony and province. The 
soil was fertile, " provision good and easy to 
come at," he writes; the woods were full of 
game and the rivers full of fish ; *' oysters were 
six inches long," and still growing ; wild tur- 
keys flew so low and in such crowds " they 
could be killed with a stick," and some of the 
big ones " weighed 46 pounds." * A deer sold 
for two shillings ; " wild pigeons were also killed 
with sticks ;" there were " plenty of swans," and 
" peaches by cart-loads." An enterprising pro- 
prietor of a summer hotel, at that time, embodied 
these facts in his circular. That same circular 
has been used by all summer hotels since his 
time, and the copy has never been changed. f 

Penn now looked around for a good place for 
the capital of his province. There was a strong 
lobby in favor of Chester, the oldest town in 
Pennsylvania, but all the best town lots in 
Chester were already sold or in the hands of 
speculators. Penn's cesthetic eye was caught 
by the beautiful country at the junction of the 
Schuylkill and Delaware. Some one told him 
that the Indian name of the Schuylkill was Man- 

*The small ones didn't weigh more than 30 pounds, probably, 
•j; But the tariff has, and so has the bill of fare. 



90 WILLIAM PENN. [1682. 

ajung, to which the noble Friend replied that 
he was Manajung this thing himself, and he'd 
call the creek anything he pleased. Three 
Swedes owned the land Penn wanted for his 
capital, and hearing that he was very anxious 
to buy, they told him that real estate was away 
up and still booming, and they unloaded their 
farms on him at a margin that made them laugh 
in their sleep for a week afterward. 

Then Penn laid out his city.* " Keep on the 
square," he had written to his sons, and he was 
determined to make it a very hard matter for 
them to get off it, whenever they came to town. 
He took a straight ruler and a sheet of paper 
and laid out his city. He drew a parallelogram 
two miles long and one mile wide. ''There," 
he said proudly, '* if you want to see something 
pretty in the way of a city, look at that." In 
the centre of this parallelogram he located a 
square of ten acres, and in each of the four 
quarters one of eight acres, for public parks, 
wisely foreseeing that some accommodations 



* It seems he didn't know that Harrisburg is the capital of 
Pennsylvania. Penn had a great deal to think about, it is true, 
but such ignorance in the Governor of the province was inex- 
cusable. 



.Et. 38.] THE GERM OF A CITY. 9 1 

would have to be provided for the tramps, 
along in 1882. Two wide streets fronted the 
rivers; running from the Schuylkill to the Del- 
aware nine streets were laid out, crossed by 
twenty-one running north and south. Of the 
nine east and west streets, High Street was a 
broad avenue, one hundred feet wide ; it is now 
called Market," and the ^' lines of trees" that 
were to fringe it in lasting ornament and shade 
have given place to double tracks of street rail- 
ways.* The streets running parallel to High 
were named Vine, Sassafras, Mulberry, Chest- 
nut, Walnut, Spruce, Pine, and Cedar. Sassa- 
fras is now called Race, and Mulberry answers 
to the name of Arch. Broad Street, one hun- 
dred and thirteen feet wide, crossed Market at 
right angles, ^and divided the city in two, north 
and south. All other streets were to be fifty 
feet in width. 

Penn thought he had plenty of room for a 
large city, with a small forest in front of every 
man's house and a kitchen-garden in the back 
yard. His dreams of Philadelphia were the only 
small things about him. The incorporated city 

" Fare, six cents. 



92 WILLIAM PENN. [1682. 

of Philadelphia grew out of Penn's little paral- 
lelogram, two miles long and one mile wide, 
until it included the entire county, a territory 
twenty-three miles in length with an average 
width of five and a half miles, an area of \2<^\ 
square miles, and a population of 800,000 inhabi- 
tants. One part of his beloved city did not 
grow, however. The ten-acre park at the inter- 
section of Broad and High streets did not catch 
the boom. It began to dwindle and fade away ; 
shrank down to Penn Square at last, and has 
finally been entirely obliterated and filled up 
with the new city buildings, which will be com- 
pleted about 1892. The other four squares still 
exist, while the pride of Penn's city is Fairmount 
Park, which Penn forgot to lay out, now unsur- 
passed by any public park in America, contain- 
ing nearly three thousand acres. There were 
several other things Penn forgot to put in his 
city, which the descendants of his colonists have 
since attended to for him. 

But Penn's town grew and prospered. The 
Indians called it *' Co-a-que-na-que," but Penn 
didn't want to feel as though he was giving out 
hard words at an Indiana spelling-school every 
time he spoke the name of his city, so he called 



^t. 38.] FENN'S GENIUS FOR NAMES. 93 

it Philadelphia.^ He displayed his originality 
and versatiHty in the christening- of his towns. 
He guarded his government carefully against 
the errors of the New England codes and in- 
tolerance, and he avoided with equal care the 
New England system of nomenclature. But for 
this, after he named the first town in his prov- 
ince Chester, he would have called Philadelphia 
New Chester, and the succeeding settlements 
North Chester, South Chester, Chester Centre, 
Chester Upper Falls, East Chester, West Ches- 
ter, Chester Corners, Chester Lower Falls, 
Chester Port, Port Chester, Chester Village, 
Chester Station, Chesterville, Chestertown, 
Chester City, Chester Court House, Chester 
Cross Roads, Chester Land, Chester Siding, 
Chester Intersection, Chester Landing, Mount 
Chester, Chester Bridge, and Chest-around-the- 
corner. Happily for posterity, Penn saw where 
that sort of a thing was liable to run if it once 
got started. 

* " Why do you call your town Philadelphia?" asked Charles, 
on Penn's return to England. " Because that is its name," 
answered the thoughtful Quaker. The King looked at him 
steadfastly, and then remarking, " That's on me," left the room 
to conceal his emotion, while Penn threw himself on the floor 
and laughed till his hat fell off. 



94 WILLIAM PENN, [168!.. 

Immigrants crowded to the Quaker City long 
before there was any place to put them. The 
new-cgmers lived in caves on the banks of the 
Schuylkill, or abode and made their soup under 
the broad canopy of heaven until they could 
build houses. The Blue Anchor Tavern was 
the first building completed in Philadelphia, 
built by a man named Guest, who was its first 
landlord. This house had twelve feet front on 
the river and ran back twenty-two feet, to Dock 
Street, and was tavern, corn-market, board of 
trade, ferry-house, post-office, steamboat wharf, 
Pennsylvania depot, and Centennial buildings, 
in its time. There was a cottage already stand- 
ing on the site of Philadelphia, built some years 
before by a man named Drinker,* but it wasn't 
built in Philadelphia, Philadelphia was built 
around it. Other houses were built near 
Guest's. Twenty-three ships, freighted with 
colonists, came up the Delaware the year of 
Penn's landing, and more were continually 
arriving. Stone houses were built, " with 
pointed roofs, balconies, and porches ;" a post- 
ofiBce and a star mail-route, " unexpedited," 

* Temperance lecturer. 



^t. 38.] ms COLONY A SUCCESS. 95 

were established within a year. Enoch Flower 
opened school in December, and taught boys 
and girls to " read for four shillings a quarter ; 
to write, six shillings ; boarding, washing, lodg- 
ing, diet, and schooling, ten pounds the whole 
year,"— flogging, gratis and regular. 

The colony was a remarkable success. "I 
must, without vanity," Penn wrote to Lord 
Hahfax, " say I have led the greatest colony into 
America that ever any man did on private 
credit." 

And though he said it who should not say 
it, it was the truth. 



CHAPTER VL 

UNDER THE BIG ELM. 

JUST about this time the curtain was rung up 
for the grand transformation scene, and the 
full strength of the entire ballet, with William 
Penn as premier, appeared in the great Treaty 
Act. The date is a little indefinite. One au- 
thority places it on October 14, 1682; another 
says it was near the close of November, 1682 ; 
still another says it was in 1682, but with cau- 
tious self-restraint ventures on no particular 
date ; one writer also allows this famous treaty 
the liberty of the entire year ; yet another his- 
torian generously gives his readers the privilege 
of dating it to suit themselves, any time between 
the destruction of Babylon and the completion 
of the Washington Monument. The Pennsyl- 
vania Historical Society, the best of all authori- 
ties, with the one exception of the valuable and 
accurate volume now in the hands of the de- 
lighted reader, fixes the date of the treaty in 
October, 1682. . 



.Et. 38.] THE OLD AND THE NEW. 9/ 

It will be borne in mind that, prior to 1752, 
the innumerable insurance calendars and count- 
less tons of American medical almanacs for gra- 
tuitous distribution by all respectable druggists 
were not printed, and the English people, both 
in the mother-country and the colonies, had no 
knowledge of the proper division of the year, 
and lived and died under the ghastly illusion 
that New Year's day fell on the first of March, 
and the year beginning at that time threw the 
Fourth of July on the fourth of September. In 
one ''Life of Penn" this appalling ignorance of 
our ancestors has evidently bothered the bi- 
ographer, who speaks of the ''6th month" in 
Penn's time as June, and in consequence has 
him "saihng before the midsummer's smoky 
breeze" along ^in October or November. In 
this present work, it being the official standard 
of the Pennsylvania Historical Society and the 
Society of Friends, the greatest attention has 
been paid to dates, and people who discover any 
errors in it are earnestly requested to correct 
them by annotations on their own copies of the 
biography, and not to trouble the pubHsher or 
author about them, or to rush into the news- 
papers with wrathful cards signed " Constant 



98 WILLIAM PENN. [1682. 

Reader" and " Old Subscriber/' which no man 
ever reads save only the proof-reader, — and he 
has to be paid for it, or he wouldn't. 

There are no contemporary accounts of this 
treaty. Bearing this fact in mind, remembering 
that no historical record of what was said and 
done at this treaty, nor where it was held, nor 
when, was made at the time, the reader is often 
surprised at the vast amount of information 
possessed on these points by modern history. 
But that is a way modern history has. Indian 
legends and Quaker traditions, handed down by 
word of mouth from one generation to another, 
have given historians all the suggestions and 
data from which their lively imaginations could 
manufacture the necessary facts. However, 
some valuable old manuscripts, quite recently 
discovered, and, in fact, written by the able and 
painstaking author of this work for the express 
purpose of throwing light and trustworthy in. 
formation upon this subject, have added largely 
to our hitherto meagre array of established facts 
in connection with this treaty. 

As to the place, although there are men who 
claim that the treaty was held at Chester and 
various other points, the better authorities 



vEt. 38.J THE PLACE OF THE TREATY. 99 

locate it on the spot now marked by an alleged 
" monument," in Kensington. Kensington is 
English for Shackamaxon. '' Colonel Markham 
had already appointed this locality for his first 
conference with the Indians," says Dixon, ''and 
the land commissioners wisely followed his ex- 
ample. Old traditions had made the place 
sacred to one of the contracting parties, and 
when Penn proposed his solemn conference, he 
named Shackamaxon as a matter of course for 
its locality." * 

Wherever and whenever this treaty was made 
and signed, it is well known that Penn had been 
posing for it from the day he landed at Chester. 
He made himself popular f with the Indians. 
He sat at their feasts, passed his plate for more 
baked dog, and affected to like Indian cookery. 
He ate parched acorns and hominy. And 
when any man, not being impelled thereto by 
the pangs of starvation, can, deliberately and in 
cold blood, eat hominy, that man is too much 
for an acre of Indians. The Indians were over- 
joyed when they saw him eat hominy, it being 

* Penn did not know that the proper name of this suburb was 
Kensington, 
•f In Lenni-Lenape dialect, "solid." 



lOO WILLIAM PENN. [1682. 

the first time any white man had been able to 
devour that luxury and live.* After this in- 
human repast, the savages began to jump, and 
Penn joined them in this pastime. He made a 
few easy jumps, until he spurred the longest- 
legged man in the tribe to do his best. Then 
William arose. He took off his long single- 
breasted cut-away coat with many buttons, but 
kept on his hat. He toed the mark carefully 
and, with a brick in each hand, began swinging 
his arms to and fro with measured rhythm. The 
guileless Indians had never before seen a man 
jump with the weights, and these swaying 
bricks were a novelty to them. While they 
gathered close around him, they could see, by 
the superhuman gravity of his severe counte- 
nance and the measured manner in which he 
lifted himself on his toes every time the bricks 
came back, that he was getting ready for the 
'■^ boss jump." f Suddenly the stately figure 
crowned with the broad-brim hat rose in the 

* From this one can judge of the awful strength of Penn's 
stomach. His long experience with English prison diet prob- 
ably prepared him for hominy; an article of alleged diet "about 
as fit to eat as beer is to drink. 

f "Boss," a Lenni-Lenape colloquial expression, meaning 
great, supreme, superlative. 



J£l, 38.] A MIXED REPORT. lOI 

air like a premature balloon ascension, and the 
two bricks went flying into the unsuspecting 
crowd, knocking down a sachem and two 
medicine-men and creating the most intense ex- 
citement and wildest confusion, taking advan- 
tage of which Penn ran two or three steps after 
he jumped, then balanced himself on his heels 
and cried, " Looky ! looky here ! " The untu- 
tored children of the forest marked the break of 
his heels, and his supposed jump measured 37 
feet 8i inches. The Indians were wild with ad- 
miration and amazement. One envious brave, 
indeed, offered to bet a wampum and a half he 
couldn't do it again without the bricks, but it 
afterward appeared that he had been hit in the 
eye with one of them, and was accordingly 
prejudiced. 

Shackamaxon, with its elm-tree and its great 
treaty, has been the theme of bard and chroni- 
cler and painter, and, faithfully painted from 
the various historical descriptions of the scene, 
the picture would indeed be impressive and 
varied as a mince -pie -and -cider nightmare. 
From various well-known, careful, and widely 
accepted authorities I quote : 

''After sailing this day, as aforesaid, about 



102 WILLIAM PENN. [1682. 

forty miles before the midsummer's smoky 
breeze, ... he beheld two Indian villages near 
the water." *' It is near the close of November," 
on which day, " October 14th, a scene took 
place which history has made memorable." 
"As if purposely formed to be the theatre of 
that memorable event, an elm-tree of extraordi- 
nary size lifted high its towering top, and from 
its giant arms threw far and wide a refreshing 
shade over many a grassy acre." * '' Under the 
wide-branching elm the Indian tribes are as- 
sembled, but all unarmed." " Marching to and 
fro in their military dresses, armed with bows 
and arrows." " The Indians threw down their 
bows and arrows, and seated themselves around 
their chiefs," for '' they came in large numbers, 
armed and painted." 

Out of an this confusion and contradiction, it 
is refreshing to walk into the light of more pains- 
taking, elaborate, and modern research. Un- 
doubtedly it was in November, 1682, when this 
treaty took place. The elm-tree was there, but 

* A refreshing .shade on a grassy acre was a very necessary 
concomitant of an out-door meeting on the Delaware late in 
November. To this shade we owe the fact that no one was 
sunstruck at this treaty. 



^t. 38.] ''RICH AND RAREr IO3 

its shade was not necessary. Penn could keep 
shady enough in a land trade, without thj5 assist- 
ance of any elm-tree. He was there, and Solo- 
mon in all his glory never wore such Quaker 
clothes. A " hat of the cavaher shape, but 
without the feather," a coat that reached to his 
knees and was " covered with buttons," a vest 
only about two sizes smaller than the coat, also 
suffering from an irruption of buttons ; " trous- 
ers extremely full, slashed at the sides and tied 
with strings or ribbons ;" " a profusion of shirt- 
sleeves and ruffles," and a " sky-blue sash tied 
round his waist." He wore his hair long and 
curled, as usuar, and was in his thirty-eighth 
year, " the handsomest, best-looking, most lively 
gentleman," Mrs. Preston says, she had ever 
seen. All Penn's biographers agree in denounc- 
ing Benjamin West's portrait of him, in his 
painting of this scene, as a wretched burlesque, 
in which Penn appears as an " ugly fat old fel- 
low, with the costumes half a century out of 
date." 

William was accompanied by Colonel Mark- 
ham, his friend Pearson, and a company of 
Friends and sailors bearing post-sutler stores 
and trader's goods. For the first and about the 



I04 WILLIAM PENN. [1682. 

only time since so-called Christian monarchs 
and alleged Christian commanders had occupied 
America, unarmed Christians showed their trust 
in God and their belief in his word by meeting 
his savage children with the extended hand of 
amity, without a smell of powder on it, and a 
proffer of friendship uncoupled with a demand 
for all the land between New Jersey and the 
Mississippi river. 

The Indians were there. Three tribes at 
least were represented by delegates who were 
present in the convention — the Lenni Lenape, 
the Mingoes, and the Shawnees. Letters of re- 
gret, conveying their cordial sympathy v/ith 
the object of the convention, and expressing 
their entire willingness to serve in any posi- 
tion to which the voice of the people might call 
them, were received from '' Old-man-holding- 
his-land-for-a-rise," " Sitting Hen," " Young-man- 
with~a-farm-in-the-Oil-Country," " Theeanthou- 
nobody," " Dontchuwishucould," '' Man-with- 
his-eye-on-a-rail-road," and *' Old-man-who-sold- 
land-to-white-people-once-before." Several of 
the absent statesmen did, indeed, say they had 
no land to sell, but they had a fine assortment 
of flint spear and arrow heads they would gladly 



^t. 38.] OPENING CHORUS. IO5 

exchange for undressed human hair of Euro- 
pean brands— English preferred. 

The Indian delegates who were present were 
largely arrayed in paint and feathers, and as 
they squatted on the ground around their 
chiefs they looked like the front door of a 
Western wagon-shop— a breathing nocturne in 
red and yellow. Approaching Penn with the 
easy grace of a man who has had his own way 
all his life, the Sachem-in-chief, the great Tami- 
nend,^ whose name, in the Lenni-Lenape lan- 
guage, signifies '' Man-who-puts-on-a-good-deal- 
of-dog," extended his hand and said, 

"How?" 

He then withdrew his hand, and appeared 
very much surprised on finding nothing in it. 
The stately ravage retired a few paces, sat 
down, and put his hand around to his hip. 

''Look out," said Colonel Markham, "he's 
feeling for a pistol." And then he stepped be- 
hind his stately cousin, remarking, "We will 
die together." 

Instead of a pistol, however, the Sachem 
drew from his pocket a sort of head-stall or 

* The author of Tammany Hall, New York, and the patron 
saint of a great political party. 



I06 WILLIAM PENN. [1682. 

chaplet, on which was fastened a small horn, 
the efnblem of sovereign power and authority, 
the wearing of which made the occasion and 
the locality sacred and inviolate. 

'' I always take a horn before I make a 
trade," said the Sachem. This was his little 
joke, at which all Indians owning his sover- 
eignty were compelled to laugh twice a year. 

Penn having caught the eye of the Speaker 
now obtained the floor, and addressed the house 
on the subject of the Pennsylvania land bill. 
He held in his hand a roll of parchment pur- 
porting to be the treaty of amity and purchase, 
but which was really the manuscript of his ex- 
tempore speech. A deathhke stillness pervaded 
the assembly, only broken by the mellow notes 
of the distant war-whoops that the little Indian 
children were trundling in Fairmount Park. 
Penn cleared his throat, chewed a troche, and 
said, 

'' Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen—" 

At this point he was interrupted by a Mingo 
sachem, who rose to a point of order and said, 

" Mr. Speaker, does not the honorable gentle- 
man speak the Mingo language ?" 

Penn replied that he knew the tune very well, 



^t. 38.] THE NORA TION. IO7 

but he didn't know the words. The Court 
then informed him that he would have to pro- 
vide an interpreter at his own expense, as the 
Mingoes were there first, and held the age on 
the language. 

An interpreter was then secured, and Penn 
resumed : 

" Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen : I am— 
er ah — I am — ha, h'm— I am not— I am— I am 
sensible — ha, unaccustomed as I am to — ha, pub- 
lic speaking— ha. Er ah — Brothers, listen." 

O Id-man- with-cotton-in-his-ears to Interpre- 
ter — '' What is he saying ?'* 

Interpreter — '' Blowed if I know." 

William Penn— *' But again! Brothers, lis- 
ten ! We are all brothers !" (Derisive laughter 
from the squa\^s.) ''That is — er um — and sis- 
ters." (Derisive laughter and cries of "Oh, 
oh !" from the braves.) " To resume ! We are 
all children together, of one family, and we 
must love one another." 

Interpreter — " He is now giving us confec- 
tionery." 

William Penn — " There is no need for us to 
quarrel. The world is big enough for us all ; 
for the red brothers and the white brothers, 



I08 WILLIAM PENN. [1682, 

too. And there is fish, and deer, and turkeys, 
and corn, and oysters, and planked shad, and 
soup, and beans, and beef, for us all." 

Young-man-not-afraid-of-the-vial to Interpre- 
ter — " Didn't he say anything about rum ?" 

Interpreter — ''Don't talk back. No, he 
hasn't got down to business yet." 

William Penn — '' Therefore, if at any time 
the red men or the white men — " 

A Shawnee delegate — " Ask him if this is a 
chess problem he is giving us?" 

WilHam Penn, corrected by the Interpreter — 
" If the red brothers see anything the white 
brothers have that they want, or vice versa" 
(loud cries of "Construe! construe!"), ''they 
must not fight and take it away. Oh no, that 
would be very naughty. And, besides, before I 
get through with thee, I'll show thee how to 
get all thee wants from an Indian without fight- 
ing about it." 

" What does he mean by that, and why does 
the brother lay the palm of his forefinger on 
the side of his nose and close one eye ?" asked 
a delegate from the Delaware nation. 

" He says," replied the Interpreter, " that you 
will understand him better when you grow 



yEt. 38.] GIVING IT TO THEM EASY. ICQ 

older, and he holds his finger that way because 
his memory is poor." 

" Ugh ! Tell him to go on with the racket." 

William Penn resumed : '' Moreover, if we 
fight, thee will get left." 

A Mingo delegate — " Please ask him to de- 
monstrate that hypothesis." 

William Penn — '' With pleasure. Thy own 
eyes see our canoes yonder." (Cries of *' Oh, 
oh !" and caustic requests for the Speaker to ex- 
plain to the gentleman the difference between a 
ship and a canoe.) '' Now, you see our canoes 
are bigger than thy canoes, and our bows and 
arrows — " 

Interpreter — " He means guns, but he seems 
to be a little off in his vocabulary to-day. He 
means all right/' 

William Penn — *' Our bows and arrows send 
out thunder and lightning. Nothing can stand 
before them." 

Old-man-with-his-arm-in-a-sling — " No, and no- 
body could stand behind those Dutch muskets 
we took away from the Swedes last winter. 
Tell him Fd rather be shot at with some of his 
thunder and lightning than touch it off." 

William Penn — *' We could easily kill thee 



I lO WILLIAM PENN. [16S2. 

with our bows and arrows, and take thy 
land." 

Interpreter — '*Young-man- with -a- patch -on- 
his-eye wishes me to say that perhaps you 
would like to come out to the lava-beds and try 
that on, if you think it's so easy. He says he's 
heard white men talk that way before, but they 
took good care to keep off the reservation all 
the same." 

William Penn — " That's all right ; but my red 
brother is here, and I am not going to the lava- 
beds. Brothers, I and my people are not 
mouth-slappers and bad men from Oshkosh. 
We do not carry razors in our boots. We are 
not come to hurt thee." 

Interpreter — " The big Indian with the bear- 
claw necklace and his ears painted black says, 
' You're right, you don't look very dangerous.* 
He's an awful bad Indian. Cut a man at a 
dance last Friday night, and has served two 
terms in Moyamensing." 

William Penn — *' We are met on the broad 
pathway of good faith and good will, so that 
no advantage is to be taken on either side. I 
will not call you children or brothers, as the 
Marylanders did, for Heaven forbid I should do 



^t. 38.] A FAR-FETCHED EXAMPLE. Ill 

anything like a Mary lander, because it's a wise 
father in these days that can keep even with his 
son or prevent his daughter from marrying the 
hostler. Neither will I compare the friendship 
between us to a chain, which the passing tramp 
or the casual Indian may bear away to the 
nearest junk-shop. But I will consider you the 
same flesh and blood with ourselves, just as 
though one man's body were divided into two 
parts," 

" Tell him," remarked an old Indian painted 
in three colors, and wearing only one ear and 
no scalp, " Tell him I have seen, and not far 
away from this pleasant land, down here in 
Virginia, one man's body divided into as many 
parts as there were Injuns in the crowd who 
could get at him, and he didn't seem to be a 
very happy man either." 

*' And tell him," said a young sachem in his 
bare head and with three bear-skin patches in 
the epilogue of his buckskin ulster, " to open 
his kiesters and show up his samples. We can 
talk when it's too dark to do anything else." 

*'And now, in conclusion," said WilHam 
Penn, " for time flies and money is twelve 
per cent, I'll tell thee what I'll do with thee. 



112 WILLIAM PENN. [1682. 

We didn't come here to rob thee, and I didn't 
come here to-day to deal in real estate at all. 
but if thee has any land thee wants to sell, I'll 
make thee an offer as square as a horse-trade. 
I don't want to beat thee out of a foot of 
ground, and I don't want to buy to-day, but if 
thee is anxious to sell, I'll give right here, cash 
and goods right down on the counter, five 
hundred dollars for the state of Pennsylvania, 
with all the dips, spurs, angles, leads, sinuosi- 
ties, stock, fixtures, good-will and other appur- 
tenances thereunto appertaining." 

" They want you," explained the Interpreter, 
'' to make it five hundred and a half." 

'' Couldn't do it," replied Penn. '' I won't 
make a dollar out of it at five hundred dollars. 
I've paid sixteen thousand pounds for it now, to 
a man that never owned a foot of it." 

*' He wants to know, Onas," ^' said the Inter- 
preter, when a sachem finished speaking, ''■ if 
you paid sixteen thousand pounds for the state 
to a land-grabber who couldn't give you a deed, 

*" Onas" was the nearest the Indians could get to Penn's 
name. Onas, in their own sweet tongue, meant a quill, and 
quill-pens were the only kind in use among the Indians. 
Although why it wasn't just as easy to say Penn, even with 
two n's, "as Onas. no one but an Indian could tell. 



^t. 38.] AN AWKWARD QUESTION. II3 

if you think it's a square deal to offer the right- 
ful owners only five hundred dollars to quiet 
title?" 

And the silence that fell on the assembly was 
so profound you might have heard a gumdrop. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE PIONEER LAND-OFFICE. 

RECOVERING from the momentary em- 
barrassment into which the irrelevant ques- 
tion of the untutored savage had thrown him, 
William hastened to explain that he hadn't 
really paid one continental dollar for the pro- 
vince as yet. That a man — his most gracious 
majesty the King, in fact — owed him 16,000 
pounds, and he knew he was never going to get 
a shilling of it. And, somehow, the King had 
the same kind of presentiment, and when Penn 
took this land for that debt, it was tacitly under- 
stood on both sides that the King hadn't lost a 
nickel, while it was the softest thing for the 
Quaker that could happen. Moreover, Penn 
assured the sachems that he didn't come there 
to make a real-estate deal. He had royal letters 
patent, right there in his pocket, conveying to 
William Penn, himself, his heirs, executors, ad- 
ministrators, and assigns, to have and to hold, 



^t. 38.] THE FLA T. 1 1 5 

for better or worse, be the same more or less, 
all and several, that part of North America 
lying between New Jersey, Maryland, the Ohio 
river and lake Erie, as hereinafter described by 
metes and bounds as follows, to wit, namely, 
viz. ; being a tract or parcel of land 300 miles 
long and 160 miles wide, and containing 47,000 
square miles, being a trifle smaller thart the 
kingdom of England. 

The Indians weakened when they heard this, 
and said they wouldn't stay in, but Penn again 
assured them it was not his intention to take a 
mean advantage of them. He did not come 
over in the Mayflower, but he believed in paying 
an Indian for his land before you converted him 
with a musket and then took his land because 
he died intestate. He just wanted them to sign 
this treaty of friendship, which would relieve 
both sides from the expense of a standing army, 
and ratify the purchases already made and the 
legal validity of the King's letters patent in 
order to quiet his title, and they would talk real 
estate some other time. This was satisfactory 
to the Indians ; with much perspiration and 
many blots and smears, and much thrusting out 
of the tongue, the Indians signed the treaty, and 



Il6 WILLIAM PENN. [16S2. 

quit-claimed the Keystone State to William 
Penn for $515.50, with the understanding that 
they should have the privilege of selling it all 
over to him again, from time to time, in sepa- 
rate tracts. Among the articles for which the 
Indians quit-claimed their rights to the state, 
Friend Weems enumerates "20 guns," worth 
$7 each, a $7 gun being considered the safest 
possible kind of gun for the white man, in the 
hands of an Indian.* Then followed " 20 fath- 
oms of match coat," whatever that is, and *' 20 
fathoms of stroud water," supposed to be some- 
thing for the hair or handkerchief ; " 40 toma- 
hawks," to be used in kiUing other Indians only ; 
" 100 bars of lead," to afford youthful Indians 
the means of securing admission to the circus ; 
"- 100 knives," worth 25 cents each, and therefore 
presumably "Barlows;" ''30 glass bottles ;"t 
'* 30 pewter spoons" (not marked ; probably 
from the groom's mother) ; " 100 awl-blades" 
(accompanied by a copy of " Every Indian his 

* We are kinder to the Indians now. No respectable scalper 
will look at a gun tendered by the government, less expensive 
than a $47 Winchester. Our Indians are much better armed 
than the regulars. 

f Dear, dear, dear! This was before Mr. Hayes was Presi- 
dent. 



^t. 38.] MORE LEGAL TENDER. \\^ 

own Shoemaker") ; "■ 300 tobacco pipes," with- 
out instruction ; '' 100 hands of tobacco," Lan- 
caster County best ; " 30 combs," * which were 
used by the gentle savages as implements of tor- 
ture on their unhappy prisoners of war ; " i 
barrel of*beer;"f "20 hoes" for the women ; 
** 100 Jews-harps," — just paint in your mind the 
astonishing spectacle of one hundred sons of the 
forest, sitting on a stake-and-rider fence, their 
faces drawn into contortions of ecstasy, their 
teeth firmly set on the jaws of the loud-sounding 
Jews-harps, their right hands swinging with the 
rhythm of an orchestral movement, pelting the 
lambient air with the melting strains of " Camp- 
town Races," better known in their own soft 
dialect as " doo-dah." Truly, William Penn's 
head was not hilly when he put in those Jews- 
harps. " Music hath charms to soothe a sav- 
age," he said, and so we put a brass band around 
the bulldog's neck. There were, furthermore, 
" 100 strings of beads" and " 30 wooden screw- 
boxes ;" X^l'^ skipple of salt;" § " 40 pairs of stock- 
ings," which the proud savages wore for gloves ; 

* ! ! ! f For three tribes of Indians! % ? 

§ A skipple was twice as much as a boodle, and two bongles 
made a boodle, A skipple of salt was therefore half a dingle. 



Il8 WILLIAM PEKN. [1682. 

"• 20 tobacco tongs/' the finiky Indians having 
the most intense dishke to handling tobacco 
with their fingers. 

In addition to the articles above specified, 
there were blankets, kettles, powder, flints, 
steels, red lead, tobacco-boxes, gimlets, molasses, 
(five gallons !), needles, wampum, and " 30 pairs 
of scissors." No mention is made of rocking- 
chairs, glove-stretchers, or shoe-buttoners, and it 
is probable that the poor savages of Penn's time 
were compelled to drag out a lingering existence, 
uncheered by the presence of these common 
necessities of life. 

Sachem Taminend, Tamanen, or Taminent, as 
the case may be, made a brief address at the 
close of the treaty, which was marked with the 
beautiful imagery and natural thrilling eloquence 
that are so characteristic of Indian orator3^ 
He assured Penn that he was a very large Indi- 
an. *' I am," he said, pumping his right arm 
up and down like a walking-beam, — an effec- 
tive and graceful gesture taught him by a mem- 
ber of the British Parliament, — '' I am half hoss 
and half alligator ; I am a raging volcano of 
wrath when anybody pulls my hair, and I will 
strike the side of a mountain if the soup is 



iEt. 38.] INDIA X FIDELITY. I IQ 

burned. I am a bad Indian, and I carry a gun. 
I hunt in the mountains, stranger ; I sleep on 
the prairie ; I eat raw buffalo, and I drink out 
of the Mississippi. Wagh !" 

And the famous treaty was consummated — 
so famous, so much written about, so little 
known; unrecorded and undying: imposing 
with the grandeur of simplicity ; kingly in the 
majesty of pure manhood ; glorious in the white 
raiment of practical Christianity ; the Sermon 
on the Mount embodied in the Quaker's treaty. 
There needs no record of its details to make it 
live in history. The simple fact that the treaty 
was made, the plain, Quaker-like truth, una- 
dorned by flowers of rhetoric or clinging ten- 
drils of speech, is enough to hand down to all 
posterit}^ the beautiful story of " the only treaty," 
says Voltaire, *' made without an oath and never 
broken." 

It has been the proud boast of the followers of 
William Penn, and the fact is even recorded by 
Bancroft, that " no drop of Quaker blood was 
ever shed by an Indian in Pennsylvania." Ah, 
if only some red-skinned Bancroft, painting in 
weird hieroglyphs, in brilliant coloring and 



I20 WILLIAM PENN. [1682. 

doubtful perspective, on the buckskin walls of 
his smoky tepee the history of this treaty for his 
race, could but say so much for the fidelity of 
the white man ! Alas ! forty years after pale- 
face and red-skin declared ** their friendship 
should endure while waters ran down the 
rivers and the sun and stars endured," an un- 
worthy follower of Penn murdered the first In- 
dian slain in Pennsylvania, and even then, faith- 
ful to their pledge given at that treaty, the 
Indians interceded for the murderer, and begged 
that, as he was a child of Onas, his life might 
be spared. The Indians have got over that 
feeling now, and so oft as opportunity presents 
they lift the hair of their white brother without 
any investigation into his standing in the relig- 
ious community. In fact, the Indian of to-day 
rather prefers fighting a man who won't fight 
back. 

The great elm-tree at Kensington stood until 
1 8 10, when it was blown down, having lived to 
see the treaty which made it famous broken into 
as many fragments as there were white men in 
Pennsylvania. It lived through the years of 
bloodshed and murder that rolled up and down 
the beautiful valley of Wyoming ; it lived to see 



JEt. 3^-1 STRICKEN IN- YEARS. 12 1 

the scalping-knife and tomahawk of the Indian 
allies of his most gracious and Christian majesty 
George III,, defender of the faith, make life a 
burden to the Pennsylvanian, and then relieve 
him of the burden ; it lived to see William Penn 
wronged, swindled, and almost beggared by his 
pretended friend, his trusted secretary, a Friend 
of his own faith ; it lived to see the great Quaker 
cast into prison in his old age ; it lived to see his 
son disgrace the name of his honored father and 
die a victim of his own excesses and wickedness, 
and it had seen enough. It was 283 years old, 
24 feet in girth, and its main branch was 1 50 feet 
long. During the British occupation of Phila- 
delphia, in the Revolutionary war, this tree was 
still held in such reverence that the Enoflish 
General Simcoe placed a guard about it, to pro- 
tect it from parties of soldiers sent out after 
fire-wood. 

When the old tree fell, it was utilized after 
the American fashion. A few cords of it 
were sent to the Penn family in England ; an 
arm-chair was made from it and placed in the 
Commissioners' Hall in Kensington. Hundreds 
of thousands of work-stands, vases, paper- 
weights, knife-handles, paper-cutters, etc., were 



122 WILLIAM PENN. [16S2. 

made from the remainder of it. During the 
Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, 
a new impetus was given to the manufacture of 
the great elm relics, and several planing-miils 
had all they could do to supply the demand. 
Probably there never was a tree so remarkable 
k)r its versatility. Pretty and useful articles of 
pine, maple, walnut, oak, ash, and cherry were 
made from the great elm and sold at remunera- 
tive prices to the reverential tourists from all 
parts of the great republic. It is estimated by 
the careful statistician who compiled the facts 
for this work that not less than six cords of 
hickory walking-sticks, w^ith the bark on, were 
made from the great elm and sold to Centennial 
pilgrims from the city. All the ground in the 
immediate vicinity of the Treat}^ Monument is 
now occupied by extensive lumber-yards, which 
appear to be stocking up with a great variety 
of seasoned hard wood. 

The site of the *' great elm" is not unmarked. 
Ah no ! The people of Pennsylvania feel for 
that treaty and the site that it made immortal a 
profound and lasting reverence. In 1849 the 
legislature of Pennsylvania appropriated $5000 
for the purchase of the treaty ground. 



^t. 38.] A GRACEFUL SHAFT. 1 23 

To-day, on Beach Street, Kensington, a three- 
cornered patch of ground, of the general shape 
of a piece of pie, and about the size of an army 
blanket, is notched out of the lumber-yards 
above mentioned. Two sides of this plat are 
shielded by a high, rough board fence, placed 
there to protect, not the monument, but the 
lumber-yard. The monument is of granite. It 
towers up to the height of a short man. It 
bears the inscription on one face, " Treaty 
ground of William Penn and the Indian nation. 
1682. Unbroken faith." On another: ''Penn- 
sylvania, Founded 1682. By deeds of peace." 
It bears various other inscriptions. The youth 
of Kensington use it for a target when they 
have their brickbat practice. The reverential 
tourist has scribbled his obscure name all over 
it in fading pencil-marks. The more patient 
tramp has scratched his ubiquitous real or stage 
name on it with rusty nails. Some humble 
artist, on his way to paint the householder's 
window-shutters, has smeared a streak of green 
paint across the top of the graceful shaft. No 
stranger can find it alone, for the ways of mod- 
ern Philadelphia are not of the original rectan- 
gular design, and the man who seeks to find the 



124 V/ILLIAM PENN. [1682. 

Treaty Monument alone is lost. 'Ihe citizens 
will not aid him. To their undying honor be 
it recorded, they try to lose him, so that he may 
never find it. But before another year rolls 
round, as other years are in the habit of doing, 
a nobler shaft will mark this historic spot. 

After the treaty, Penn went for a few days to 
his country-house in " Pennsbury," on the Dela- 
ware, opposite Burlington. It was a very com- 
fortable hovel for a man of quiet tastes, and 
cost, with the grounds, between seven and ten 
thousand pounds, for the Governor was not the 
man to throw away a lot of money on a fine 
house. " Any sort of hut," he said, ^' is good 
enough for me." It was built on an island, " a 
treble island," says one biographer, '■' the Dela- 
ware running around it three times." When a 
river gets around the same place three times, 
you may safely set that place down for an 
island, whether the book says so or not."^ 

About this time, also, the first child of English 
parents was born in Pennsylvania, and Penn 
gave the infant, whose name was John Key, a 

* The branch of the river that used to "run around Penns- 
bury three times" doesn't run around it at all now. It is 
dried up. 



^t. 38.] THE FIRST-BORN PHILADELPHIAN. 12$ 

tract of land. There had been plenty of Dutch 
and Swede children born before this, but they 
didn't count. This act of marked partiality, if 
it was intended to discourage the birth of chil- 
dren of other nationalities, and throw the man- 
tle of a high protective tariff about new English 
children, failed in its purpose. Dutch children 
continued to be born with great regularity and 
frequency, unstimulated by the hope of any 
farm, until at length they owned and farmed 
about three fifths of the state of Pennsylvania, 
and held the other two fifths on long lease. In 
1755 this first native-born Philadelphian, " First- 
born ' Key, laid the corner-stone of the Pennsyl- 
vania Hospital. 

In March, 1683, the Governor met the As- 
sembly and PTOvincial Council in Philadelphia. 
Having a great deal more important business 
to attend to, the Assembly, with the natural in- 
stinct of a legislative body, began to tinker with 
the Constitution and Charter. It was all well 
enough, but they wanted to change it, for no 
man ever yet went to the legislature who did 
not want to change all the laws any other men 
had made, before he attended to any pressing 
business. The Assembly wanted a new charter, 



126 WILLIAM PENN, [1683. 

and Penn did not stand in the way of their de- 
sires. A joint committee of the Provincial 
Council and the Assembly drew up the new 
charter, in which the Assembly gave to itself 
whatever power it wanted, and generously in- 
vested the Governor and Provincial Council 
with the rest. This w^as the beginning of the 
tinkering with Penn's Constitution, and it has 
been kept up until to-day there is not one of 
Penn's original sixty-one laws on the statute- 
books of the state he founded. 

The Assembly of 1683, among other things, 
voted an impost on certain goods exported or 
imported, for the Governor's support, which 
Penn refused to accept. He was the first great 
Pennsylvania free-trader ; * he would let them 
impost him no imposts, and for years, it is said, 
the tax-gatherer slowly starved to death in 
Pennsylvania. 

After a harmonious session of three weeks — 
harmonious because the Assembly wanted every- 
thing and Penn wanted nothing — this body 
collected its per diem, exaggerated its mileage, 
and, charging by the longest way, went home 
by the shortest. 

* And last. 



JEi. 39.] T//JS CITY OF HIS HEART. \2J 

Penn was a Governor without personal ambi- 
tion. He saw, and without a regret, the legis- 
lature of his own creation deprive him of his 
rightful and reasonable political powers until 
he couldn't so much as appoint a janitor or a 
policeman. " I propose," he said, '' to leave 
myself and my successors no power of doing 
mischief, that the will of one man may not 
hinder the good of a whole country." His very 
life was wrapped up in the city and colony he 
had founded, and when, during this same year, 
important matters called him back to England, 
he left his great loving heart in Pennsylvania — 
*'And thou, Philadelphia," he writes on ship- 
board, "the virgin settlement of this province, 
named before thou wast born, what love, what 
care, what service, and what travail hath there 
been to bring thee forth and preserve thee from 
such as would abuse and defile thee ! My soul 
prays to God for thee, that thou mayest stand 
in the day of trial, that thy children may be 
blessed of the Lord, and thy people saved by 
his power." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE GO-AS-YOU-PLEASE WALK. 

TT was about time to buy more land, or rather 
■'■ to buy over again some that had already 
been bought and paid for. There is a deed 
dated June 23, 1683, by which, for the consider- 
ation of a certain amount of money and junk to 
them in hand paid, Tamanen and Metamequan 
parties of the first part, conveyed to William 
Penn, party of the second part, all their land 
between Neshaminy Creek and Pennypack, and 
another, dated July 14, in the same year, con- 
veys to William Penn certain lands extending 
from the Chester to the Schuylkill River, and 
as far back as a man could walk in three days. 

The true story of the measurement of this 
land is a little mixed, but it is certain beyond 
all doubt or debate or dispute that the red 
brothers got caught on a falling market, and 
were most dreadfully left on the deal. " Tra- 
dition" steps in to protect William Penn from 



^t. 39-] LEISURELY MEASUREMENTS. 1 29 

any obloquy in the matter, and relates how 
the Governor himself, with several of his friends 
and a number of Indian chiefs, '' began to walk 
out this land at the mouth of the Neshaminy, 
and walked up the Delaware," it being the cus- 
tom, doubtless, for ''a man" to go in a crowd 
when he was going to walk out all the land he 
could cover in 72 hours. Moreover, "• it is said," 
by this same trustworthy Tradition, that "they 
walked leisurely,^ after the Indian manner,f 
sitting down sometimes to smoke their pipes, 
to eat biscuit and cheese, and drink a bottle of 
wine." There is a general air of truthful sim- 
plicity about this traditionary narrative that at 
once challenges the belief of the most credulous. 
And ''it is certain," Tradition resumes, ''that 
they arrived at^a spruce-tree near the mouth of 
Baker's Creek in a day and a half, the whole 
distance being less than 30 miles." 

That certainly was not a very large walk for 
a day and a half, and the " leisurely" Indians 
in the crowd were, up to this point, quite well 



* Which sounds extremely reasonable. Part of the time, it 
may be, they walked backward. 

f It depends a great deal on what or whom the Indian is 
walking after how " leisurely" he walks. 



130 WILLIAM PENN. [1683. 

satisfied with their bargain. It may be, indeed, 
that on an occasion of this kind the Indians did 
walk in a " leisurely manner," and no doubt 
they felt the unconquerable and terrible long- 
ings of the destroying '* biscuit-and-cheese" 
habit, to which they seem to have been ad- 
dicted, at every mile. There was a great 
temptation in that walk to make the Indians 
*4eisurely." When they reached the spruce- 
tree at Baker's Creek, William Penn said that 
would include about as much land as he wanted 
just then, so '' they run the line from that point 
to Neshaminy, and the remainder was left to be 
walked out when it should be wanted for settle- 
ment." 

So far tradition clears the skirts of William 
Penn of any attempt to overreach the red 
brothers. And tradition is strongly supported 
by the whole life and character of the Quaker, 
who lived from boyhood to old age like a man 
with a soul above deceit or trickery. 

But on the 20th of September, 1733, we get 
out of the realm of tradition and come into the 
record. On this day the remainder of the line, 
as provided and described in that deed, was 
walked out, fifteen years after Penn had passed 



^t. 39-] THE USUAL PREPARATIONS. I3I 

away from all this care and trouble and bicker- 
ing, to the reward of the righteous man. It 
was another impressive scene, the completion 
of this old transaction, the measuring of the 
land deeded to the man now sleeping in the 
Friends* burying-ground in the far-away English 
meadows. The Indians were on hand again 
with the usual rations of biscuit and cheese, 
which should mark the numerous halts for 
lunch. They had their pipes and plenty of 
tobacco with them, indicating how pleasant 
and "■ leisurely" would be the stroll, "after the 
Indian manner." It doesn't appear, by the rec- 
ord, that there were any bottles of wine to 
drink, as in the good old days of Onas, but 
that was because the Indians were more civil- 
ized, and had ^become enlightened by contact 
with the white men.* The Governor of Penn- 
sylvania was not there, but he sent a hand. He 
said he wasn't much of a pedestrian himself, 
but he sent three men that he would back for 
the Astley belt and all the gate-money against 
any human being that ever ambled over the 
tan-bark. When these three men — Edward 

* That is, they hadd learned to carry each mann his private 
flaske in his breaste pocquet. 



132 WILLIAM PENN. [1683. 

Marshall, James Yeates, and Solomon Jennings 
— put on spiked shoes, and began to remove the 
greater portion of their garments, one of the 
Indians begged to remind the honorable gen- 
tlemen that they were going to take a walk, 
not a bath. 

" Did you think of accompanying this over- 
land surveying expedition?" asked Edward 
Marshall, in behalf of the Pennsylvania com- 
missioners. 

To which the Indian chieftain proudly re- 
plied that he contemplated keeping up with 
the procession, if he broke a trace. 

**Then,'* said Edward Marshall, tightening 
his belt and gripping a corn-cob in each hand, 
'' throw away your blanket and climb on your 
pony, and if I happen to fall asleep this side 
of the Ohio River, just wake me up and tell 
me of it, will you?" 

The walk began at a chestnut-tree below 
Wrightstown. The men tramped gayly away, 
until they reached where Solomon Jennings 
said he felt aweary and lay down in the cool 
shade to rest. He rested well enough ; but 
when he tried to get up, to his amazement 
there wasn't a solitary joint in his body, from 



^t. 39.] WALKING FOR KEEPS. 1 33 

his neck to his heels. So he was off the tan- 
bark, and got more rheumatism than glory for 
his walk. James Yeates kept along with a per- 
severing gait until they reached the foot of 
Blue Mountain, when he was taken sick while 
crossing a stream, and Edward Marshall had to 
help him back. 

*'Now," said Edward, '' I believe I will finish 
this walk and take first money myself" 

And then that man set out to walk. And he 
did walk. *' There is no funny business about 
this match," he said, and his panting red broth- 
ers began to believe it. Three white men 
started in for the walk, but after the first four 
laps it was evident that Edward Marshall pos- 
sessed not only speed but staying powers, and 
he was the fayorite with everybody except the 
Indians. When the *' leisurely" savages sug- 
gested that it was about time to drink a bottle 
of wine, he said his trainer wouldn't let him 
touch it. But he intimated that he would drink 
a cup of beef-tea as he walked, if they would 
bring it him. 

When the time came at which William Penn 
would have halted to eat the ''biscuit and 
cheese" which cheers but does not inebriate 



134 WILLIAM PENN. [1683.. 

or excite any great enthusiasm for walking, 
Edward Marshall said he had breakfasted on 
some lean mutton-chops, strong green tea, and 
calves'-foot jelly, and felt as though he could 
walk four hundred miles without a lunch. And 
when the Indians suggested pipes, the pedes- 
trians all declared they wouldn't walk another 
step if any smoking was allowed in the gar- 
den. 

So on they went, and Edward Marshall piled 
up the miles and tossed the broad acres over his 
shoulders like a man who is walking for first 
money. When he felt a little tired and the In- 
dians urged him to take a little resl, expressing 
great concern lest he should break down and 
be unable to come in with the crowd at the 
finish, he merely fell into a regular heel-and- 
toe walk, and said that was the way he 
always walked when he went to sleep. Then 
when he woke up he would lengthen his stride 
and set the milestones down behind him in a 
reckless way that kept the scorer busy and 
made the Indians feel that walking had degen- 
erated from a pure, health-giving exercise into 
a trade of the gamblers, fit to rank with base- 
ball and the agricultural horse-trot of the county 



^t. 39.] CLEANED OUT OF THE POOL. 1 35 

fair. At the close of the day and a half, Edward 
Marshall passed the judges' stand at a seven- 
mile gate, and the scorer marked up 86 miles on 
the board. 

And the maddest crowd of Indians you ever 
saw came up to look at the score. They de- 
nounced the whole scheme as a swindle, de- 
clared they wouldn't pay any side bets, and said 
it was no way to walk anyhow, and no one but 
a white man would be guilty of walking that 
distance in a day and a half* They admitted 
that the man walked ; he did not run, and he 
did not ride, he walked, fair and square, but he 
walked too fast and too far. Any one who has 
ever noted the patient endurance with which an 
Indian at Niagara Falls can sit still on the curb- 
stone fourteeiv hours a day, will readily under- 
stand the amazement and wrath of the " leisure- 
ly" Indians at Edward Marshall's extravagant 
restlessness. 

The Governor pacified the Indians of 1733 by 
presents of rum and molasses and pie and other 

*They were only silenced when, on demanding that the 
ground should be walked over again, the Governor showed 
them Rowell's record of 150 miles in 24 hours at Madison 
Square Garden, New York, and said the next walking for 
ground he did, Rowell was to walk for him. 



136 WILLIAM PENN. [1683. 

intemperate beverages, but held on to the Z6 
miles of land all the same.* As for Edward 
Marshall, he said, when quite an old man, that 
he never got anything for this walk except a 
promise, a coin largely issued and circulated by 
Governors. 

But the first half of this walk, where Penn 
strolled over the ground with the tranquil haste 
of a boy sent on an errand in a hurry, was free 
from heart-burnings. It is related, indeed, that 
Tamanen gave a dinner on the occasion, at 
which he feasted Penn on app'Je - dumplings, 
which was the only attempt ever made on Penn's 
life by the Indians. The Governor was a strong 
man, however, and the would-be assassin failed 
in his dastardly purpose. Penn suffered from 
a terrible nightmare that night. He dreamed 
that he was on his way back to England, sail- 
mg across the Atlantic in his hat, with a party 
of friends, when they were attacked by a pirate 
hat, a three-decker of vast dimensions, which 
sunk his hat and all on board. And while he 
was trying to remember whether his hat was 

* It is said the first murder of a white man by an Indian in 
Pennsylvania took place on this ground, 21 years after it was 
Stepped off by Marshall. 



JEt 39 ] AN ANCIENT FINANCIER. 1 3/ 

insured, he woke in an agony of fear that it was, 
and it would therefore cost his widow five times 
the amount of the insurance to collect half of it. 
But beyond this one fearful night, he suffered 
no evil from the boiled dumplings, and affirmed 
off from the habit the next day, fearing it might 
grow upon him.* 

During this year the colony made rapid strides 
toward an old and cultured civilization. Charles 
Pickering was indicted by the grand jury for 
coining "Spanish bitts and Boston money." 
The trouble with Pickering's money was that 
it was too big for its size,t and contained more 
copper than silver. Pickering was sentenced 
to redeem, at face value, all his light money, 
which was immediately called in by proclama- 
tion, and pay a^fine of £a,o toward the building 
of the new court-house, to be committed to jail 
until it was paid, and give bonds for his good 
behavior.ij: 

* It is said the Indians taught the white men to eat boiled 
apple-dumplings, in revenge for the introduction of rum and 
croquet into this country by the pale-faces. 

f This was the original 92-cent dollar, afterward very popular 
among the more barbarous tribes of the United States. 

:j: Some of Pickering's descendants are still living in Phila- 
delphia, but they are not given to boring company with anec- 
dotes about " When grandpa went to see William Penn." 



138 WILLIAM PENN. [1683. 

There the Provincial Council sat in its first 
trial for witchcraft. In those good old times 
a colony without a witch would have been a 
rare novelty. The best families in Boston kept 
their own private witches, the best scholarship 
of Massachusetts accepted them ; Cotton Mather 
hunted more witches than he preached sermons, 
and after a woman reached the age of seventy 
and lost her teeth, her life was safer among the 
pirates of Penzance than it was in Salem. Not 
alone the Puritans, who at this time made a be- 
lief in witchcraft a part of their religion, but 
learned divines of other denominations, on both 
sides of the Atlantic, not only believed in 
witches, but published pamphlets declaring 
their belief, that we of to-day might know that 
our good old fathers were no better than they 
ought to be, and didn't know a line more than 
the law allowed them. Richard Baxter in Eng- 
land believed just as Cotton Mather did in Mas- 
sachusetts ; and George Fox, the first Quaker 
and founder of the Society of Friends, not only 
believed in witches, but believed that he had 
the power to subdue them. Those were glo- 
rious old times, the good old times of our 
ancestors, when they boiled men alive in Ger- 



JEt. 39.] * THE GOOD OLD TIMES. 1 39 

many and England for making counterfeit 
money ; and they boiled them slowly, by a re- 
finement of cruelty, letting the man down into 
the seething caldron feet first, so that he might 
enjoy it himself and feel good, when his feet got 
warm. When in Scotland they burned an old 
woman and her child at the stake for creating 
a storm of thunder and lightning simply by 
pulling off their stockings.* When in our own 
favored land the zealous colonists jabbed an awl 
through a man's ears if he was a Quaker, and 
hanged him if he didn't quit it. When they slit 
a man's tongue if he was a Presbyterian, and 
pulled it clear out by the roots if he was a 
Methodist. And they tried to drown him if he 
was a Baptist ! It wasn't really safe for him to 
be anything, bacause, no matter what he was, 
somebody could prove that he was a heretic, 
and burn him alive and take his farm. These 
'' good old times," when a steamboat was a 
mud-scow, with a mainsail as big as a circus- 
tent, and a bar every fifteen feet in the river.f 
When a man went to bed at dusk, and got up 

*In our more Christian civilization to-day you can't shoot 
a man even when he pulls off his boots in a sleeping-car. 
t And none on the boat. 



140 WILLIAM PENN. [1683. 

in the night to eat breakfast, and struggled with 
the kitchen fire an hour and a half with a piece 
of cold, sullen, fireless flint and a wet tinder- 
box.* When fashion compelled even a bow- 
legged man to wear tights and knee-breeches. 
And the poor wretch had to wander about 
through life and in society, looking like a 
pair of parentheses with clothes on. And 
every time a girl danced with such a man, 
she felt as though she was waltzing in brack- 
ets. When a young man, if he went up Sun- 
day night to see his sweetheart, as the cus- 
tom was in the good old times,t had to 
sit the whole long evening through, over on 
one side of the room, betAveen the girl's 
father and mother, while the girl sat on the 
opposite side of the room, beside the parson, 
who tenderly held one of her hands in both 
his own, to amuse the young man, while he 
earnestly warned her against all earthly vanities 
in general, and that young man in particular. 

In such good old times as these, Pennsylvania 
could not hope to get along without at least one 
case of witchcraft. But the Pennsylvania witch 

* Now we start the kitchen fire and the kitchen roof in one 
time and two motions with a simple tilt of the kerosene-can. 
f A custom that has since become entirely obsolete. 



JEt. 39.] FE/^y TAME WITCHES. I4I 

was a very tame affair.* She was a Swedish 
witch. Her name was Margaret Mattson. 
There was another witch, tried at the same 
time, but as this witch's name is handed down 
as the astonishing compilation of Yeshro Hen- 
drickson, its sex is to be guessed at. Margaret 
was accused of having bewitched several cows 
some twenty years prior to the date of her 
trial. One witness was called to prove this, 
and he testified that somebody told him so. 
Then he stepped down, and a female being, 
groaning through this vale of tears with the 
awful name of Annaky Coolin, testified that 
Margaret was guilty of high treason, felony, 
contributory negligence, and blasphemy, be- 
cause when Annaky's husband was boiling the 
heart of a calf that had died by witchcraft, the 
prisoner at the bar came along, and learning 
that they were '' boiling of flesh, she said they 
had better they had boiled of the bones, with 
several other unseemly expressions." 

Nevertheless, in the face of this damning evi- 
dence, which in Massachusetts would have 

* At that time. There are witches in Pennsylvania now, 
but they are more dangerous to the peace of heart than was 
this one. They have brown eyes and dimples, and are rated by 
the insurance companies as "extra hazardous" when under the 
age of twenty-four. 



142 WILLIAM PENN. [1683. 

hanged her in a minute, the Pennsylvania jury 
merely found her " guilty of the common fame 
of being a witch, but not guilty in manner and 
form as she stands indicted." The witch was 
not punished ; she was merely placed under 
bonds to keep the peace, and turned loose to 
torment the kine of Knud Christofffiferssson 
and Niels Nieddderssenn by her dreadful arts. 
That was the first and (with the exception 
noted on p. 141) only witch in Pennsylvania. 

It is to be regretted that Penn's charge to the 
jury in this case is not on record. It would be 
interesting to know just what he thought of 
witches at a time when so many leading minds 
believed in them. But no doubt he thought 
with his usual good sense, and was as much 
ahead of his times as some of his colleagues 
were behind them. William Penn was a shrewd 
observer and a man of broad experience in 
courts and prisons, and he doubtless knew that 
in a case of witchcraft the major part of the 
meanness, ignorance, and malice was repre- 
sented by the prosecution. In those days 
men's passions were very strong. But then 
their morals were very weak, so they could 
mix them and make a very good average. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE LAND OF CORN AND WINE. 

npHIS year, among other things the busy 
■*• little Legislature did, they ordered that 
an anchor be the seal of Philadelphia. Absent 
members of the house were fined 12 pence sterl- 
ing, which shows that the early Pennsylvanian 
didn't know how to get elected to the Legisla- 
ture, draw his salary and stationery allow- 
ances, collect his mileage both ways, and 
gather in a goodly allowance for a committee 
clerk, and nev^r go near the capital. A bill 
was introduced prescribing that " two cloaths" 
only be used for clothing, one for winter and 
one for summer, but it was lost, as was also 
the bill fining all young men who failed to 
marry at a specified age. 

And this year also cometh " Indian Ben,** 
saying that he is an African slave of genuine 
Indian parentage, and that he is the bounden 
slave of Friend Ewer, and he prays for his free- 



144 V/ILLIAM PENN. [1683. 

dom. But he didn't get it all the same. His 
owner said, '' What's Ewer's is mine, and what's 
mine is my own," and held on to his slave. It 
was five years later that the first protest against 
human slavery came from the lips and hearts 
of Quakers. And they were not English Qua- 
kers then. 

The grand jury this year presented *' that all 
trees that are offensive in this city may be cut 
down." It may have been necessary to have 
the trees destroyed, but still one cannot help 
washing that the members of this grand jury 
had been first hanged on them. 

The attention of the Council was also called 
to a very grave matter. John White^ came 
before it with the information that the Mar}^- 
landers had reenforced their fort at Christiana, 
and would not let him cut hay. Nay, further- 
more, they pointed their guns at him and cast 
what hay he already had cut into the swiftly 
flowing river. Moreover, " Major English came 
into New Castle with forty armed men on 
horses, and told him that, as to the case of his 
hay, he might peaceably cut it, if he would only 

■*Son of old White, of Whiteville, White County. 



JEi. 39.] T//E OLD SETTLER'S UNION. 1 45 

say to them, '' Thou drunken doggred IngHsh, 
let me cut hay." It doesn't appear whether he 
said it or not, but this shows what vast and 
tangled questions of diplomacy and statecraft 
our fathers wrestled with. 

This year and those following it abound in 
old settlers' stories, of cold weather, unprece- 
dented high water, big yields of corn, the com- 
fort of the cave houses, abundance of game, and 
tame Indians. A boy was sent out by an im- 
provident white family to beg corn of some in- 
dustrious Indians. One of the Indians, seeing 
the boy had nothing to put the corn in, and 
knowing a great deal better than to lend a bas- 
ket, or anything else, to a white man, took off 
the boy's trousers, tied the ends of the legs to- 
gether, filled them with corn, and hanging the 
laden bifurcated garmenture about the boy's 
neck, sent him home. 

Again, some most excellent Indians, meeting 
some white boys in the woods in the afternoon, 
fearing they might get lost, sent them home,* 
then came to the house late at night, unable to 
sleep for anxiety, to ask if the boys got home 

* Knowing that was the very way to make any boy go farther 
into the woods. 



14^ WILLIAM PENN. [1683. 

all right. They seemed very much disappointed 
on learning that they did and were then sound 
asleep in bed, and went away profoundly de- 
jected, the elder of the Indians remarking to 
his comrades '' that a scalp in the bush is worth 
six in the house." 

Richard Townsend was very much annoyed 
by a deer which came to look at him while he 
was mowing. Richard did not mow very well, 
having a habit of plunging the point of the 
scythe into the ground and then falling for- 
ward over the heel thereof, abrading his shins 
and ruining his temper as he went over. The 
deer followed him round and round, until its 
scrutiny became so embarrassing that Friend 
Townsend hung his scythe in a tree and made 
a rush at the deer. The fleet-footed monarch 
of the glen made a bee-line for the mountains. 
Richard Townsend had no gun, but he gave 
chase, and taking off his boots ran the deer 
down and kicked it to death. One of Rich- 
ard's neighbors " had a bull so gentle that he 
used to bring his corn on him instead of a 
horse." This may have been a very remark- 
able thing in those days, though we cannot see 
why a bull that would carry a horse to mill 



^t. 39.] INDIAN NURSES. 147 

without protest shouldn't be perfectly willing 
to carry a sack of corn. 

In those days when the Friends went to 
yearly meeting, it was the custom of some fami- 
lies to leave the children at home, and the 
Indians always came over to the house, washed 
the youngsters' faces, brushed their hair until 
they cried, just as vigorously as their own 
mothers could, and would have clawed their 
tender scalps, pulled their hats down to their 
necks, and with a final whack on the crowns, 
so that not even a cyclone could lift the hat,"^ 
sent them to school. Then they fed the baby, 
rocked it to sleep, swept and dusted the rooms, 
brushed the fender, and scoured the hearth 
with Venetian red, pocketed a handful of but- 
tons, some spoons, and a case-knife, slid the 
grindstone under their blankets, gathered up 
the axe, smelt around the pantry for rum, and 
went away into the pathless forest without 
waiting to receive the thanks of the grateful 
parents. 

When John Chapman's daughter wanted 

^ It was only by closely observing a white Christian mother 
put her own boy's hat on his defenceless head that the Indians 
could catch this graceful knack. 



148 WILLIAM PENN. [1683. 

venison, she just went out into the woods, found 
a big fat buck, took the halter off her horse 
and slipped it over the buck's head, and led 
him home. 

William Penn writes in a long letter to the 
Free Society of Traders that '' the kings, 
queens, and great men of several Indian tribes 
visited him ;" * he found the land to contain 
" divers sorts of earth, sand, yellow and black, 
and gravel, loamy and dusty, and in some 
places a fast fat earth," not to mention the kind 
he could fall down in on the cross-walks ; and 
with the unfailing instinct of an old settler he 
says as to weather, '' I have lived over the 
hottest and coldest that the oldest liver in the 
province can remember." f He also discovered 
that the "natural product of the country, ol 
vegetables, is trees, fruits, plants, flowers." 

This information was received with great joy 
by the Royal Geographical Society, which had 
previously supposed that the vegetable pro- 
ducts of Pennsylvania were limited exclusively 

* William always managed to get into the best society wher- 
ever he went. 

f Penn hadn't been here long, but he wasn't going to sit 
around and let any "old subscriber" or "oldest inhabitant" 
hold over the proprietor. 



^t. 39.] ANCIENT COLONIAL LIVER PADS. I49 

to clams, planked shad, Philadelphia squab, 
waffles and catfish, crude petroleum, and the 
Standard Oil Company. Peaches, Penn said, 
were in great quantities, and '' made a pleasant 
drink," from which we infer that they didn't 
waste many peaches in pies or canning establish- 
ments. He also declares that he is going into 
the wine business with some of the native 
grapes, and " hopes the consequence will be 
as good wine as any European countries of 
the same latitude do yield." Never in his life 
had *' he tasted such duck and veal." He 
found divers plants which were medicinal, and 
'* all of great virtue, suddenly curing the pa- 
tient." From these wild plants, of such supe- 
rior virtue, is made the wonderful and infalli- 
ble medicine the proprietors of which offered 
the publishers of this work $65,000 for the in- 
sertion of its name in this connection.* 

He found the Indians numerous, ''tall, 
straight, well built, and of singular proportions; 
they tread strong and clever, and mostly walk 

* But the publishers refused. They said they were not 
publishing books for money, but simply for the diffusion of a 
higher knowledge, the elevation of literary taste, and the 
gratuitous dissemination of a broader information on histori- 
cal, speculative, and scientific problems. 



150 WILLIAM PENN. [1683. 

with a lofty chin." He did ** see some as 
comely European-like faces among them of 
both sexes as on your side of the sea," — a style 
of Indian that has forever passed away ; Feni- 
more Cooper used them all up. 

" For their original," continues Penn, speak- 
ing of the Indians, '* I am ready to believe them 
of the Jewish race, I mean of the stock of the 
ten tribes, and that for the following reasons: 
they were to go to a land not planted or 
known ;" " their eye is little and black, not un- 
like a straight-looked Jew ;" '' their language is 
lofty and narrow, but like the Hebrew in 
signification, full ;" *' I find them of the like 
countenance, and their children of so lively 
resemblance that a man would think himself in 
puke's Place or Berry Street, London, when 
he seeth them ;" ''they agree in rites; they 
reckon by moons ; they offer their first-fruits ;" 
'* they have a kind of feast of tabernacles ; they 
are said to lay their altar upon twelve stones ; 
their mourning lasts a year." 

He loved their language : "■ I know not a 
language in Europe that hath words of more 
sweetness or greatness, in accent or emphasis," 
to prove which he cites Octocockon, Shak, 



yEt. 39-] VOLUMINOUS LEGISLATION. 15I 

Poquesian, Passijon, * Secatareus, Runcocas, 
and Oricton. He praises their liberality, and 
mourns over their love of rum. At least one of 
their characteristics has been handed down to 
their children, and has developed and grown 
strong with age. For it is so that the for- 
bidden fire-water which the honest trader sell- 
eth in these days to the children of the forest 
is even so craftily qualified that when a white 
man, even a blue-tempered cowboy from the 
ranges of the Arkansaw, drinketh but one drink 
of it, he straightway turneth about and looketh 
for a clean place where he may have a fit. f 

The Swedes, who were in the province be- 
fore Penn's arrival, taught the Indians to drink 
not only rum, but raw whisky, alcohol, high- 
wines, camphene, aqua fortis, burning fluid, 
non-explosive kerosene, and other mild north- 
ern exhilarators. 

Penn w^as proud because his two general 
assembhes passed seventy bills in two weeks, 
though but sixty-one of them went on record 



* William seems to have omitted the syllables " demi" be- 
tween i and j in this word. 

f He may not find the clean place, but he has the fit, with- 
out any postponement on account of the weather. 



152 WILLIAM PENN. [1683. 

as laws, as though he foresaw that their suc- 
cessors would take seventy weeks to pass two 
laws, and both of them private bills embodying 
land-grants or railroad franchises. He says 
there was room in the Schuylkill — which in his 
plain way he spells Sculkil — to '' lay up the 
royal navy of England." It is still large enough 
to lay up occasionally the American ice-man, 
who is a much larger man than the royal navy 
of Great Britain, and it costs a great deal more 
to keep him up. The Schuylkill, Penn said, 
" was a hundred miles boatable above the falls," 
but he wisely refrained from saying what kind 
of boats. There were fourscore houses in Phila- 
delphia, and no end of caves, wherein the peo- 
ple were behaving themselves about as well as 
could be expected of people who live in caves, 
which was very well.* The saw-mill and the 
timber for the glass-house were placed by the 
river side, for convenience of shipments, with- 
out any regard for the interests of the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad; ''the tannery hath plenty of 
bark." f Two whale-ships were fitted out, and 
a company was going to lay a pipe-line to Nan- 

* Considering they lived in caves, 
f So had the quinine. 



^t. 39.] STILL THE MARYLAND BOUNDARY. 153 

tucket, and charge tankage for every whale 
struck outside of Pennsylvania waters; Penn 
urged the Society of Traders to promote 
" whatever tends to the promotion of wine and 
the manufacture of linen in these parts," even 
while he mourned over the growing fondness 
of the intemperate savage for- rum. Penn was 
a teetotaler, but he wasn't bigoted. 

The Friends by this time had a few meeting- 
houses in the country. There were three in 
Pennsylvania, one at Falls, one at Pennsbury, 
the Governor's house, and one at Colchester, 
''all in the county of Bucks;" one at Phila- 
delphia, one at Tawcony, one at Ridley, at J. 
Simcock's, and one at Wm. Rure's, at Chiches- 
ter; the Dutch had a meeting-house at New 
Castle, and tlje Swedes had three— at Christina, 
at Tenecum, and at Wicoco— within half a mile 
of Philadelphia. 

This summer went Colonel Markham to Eng- 
land on business for Penn. Lord Baltimore and 
the proprietor of Pennsylvania were still wrang- 
ling over the boundary question. Each man 
owned more land than he could walk over if he 
tramped all the rest of his life, but he wanted 
more. In fact, a provincial proprietor never 



154 WILLIAM PENN. [1683. 

did know when he had enough. He knew that 
he never had so much that he couldn't hold a 
little more, if he could lay his hands upon it. 
This Maryland boundary question was the first, 
and for a time the only serious annoyance that 
troubled Penn in the '' Holy Experiment." Col- 
onel Markham, as his agent, had held interview 
after interview with Lord Baltimore and his 
agents, without reaching any satisfactory con- 
clusion. Penn met Lord Baltimore, in all 
formal state and decorous cordiality, at Colonel 
Failler's mansion in Anne Arundel County, and 
once again in New Castle, to discuss this bound- 
ary. But nothing came of it. The complete and 
appalling ignorance of the English people in re- 
gard to the geography of America at that time 
was even greater than it is to-day.* This was 
partly owing to the fact that in those days very 
few people came from England to America, 
unless they were driven to it by persecution 
and threats of death, and when a British travel- 
ler did come over for the purpose of making ob- 



* This startling statement has been challenged by many of 
the leading minds of the day, among others the proof-reader 
and the author of Webster's Dictionary. I reassert the state- 
ment, however, and stand prepared to prove it. 



^t. 39-] AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY ABROAD. 1 55 

servations and gathering materials for a book, 
he probably bought a through ticket in Boston 
for San Francisco, crept into a Pullman car, 
and slept for six days and nights, woke up 
in San Francisco, went on to England by the 
Pacific steamers and the oriental overland route, 
and published a " History of the American colo- 
nies, with an account of the manners, customs, 
and national characteristics of the inhabitants ; 
political organization, and religious peculiari- 
ties ; with a complete glossary of the language ; 
embellished with numerous illustrations and 
most accurate maps, and a portrait of General 
Assembly, commander-in-chief of the state of 
Philadelphia."* 

Owing to this lamentable state of ignorance 
on the part of the Government, the boundaries 
of all the colonies, from North Carolina to 
Connecticut, were so inaccurately and loosely 



* Even the most sceptical will admit that matters are not 
quite so bad to-day. Very few English maps now locate Erie, 
Pa., on the Canadian side of Lake Erie, and Illinois is usually 
set down as the capital of Nebraska. It used to be located 
and described as the capital of Faneuil Hall. Chicago, also, 
is now located as the sea-port town of Texas ; whereas older 
English geographers used to say there was no such state as 
Chicago ! ! 



156 WILLIAM PENN. [1683. 

described that the proprietor of any province 
could, with all color of right and law, claim as 
much of any other province as he wanted. 
Lord Baltimore's patent for Maryland named 
the fortieth degree of latitude for the northern 
boundary of his province. Penn's charter for 
his province also included *' the beginning of 
the fortieth degree of latitude," and further- 
more the charter settled the location of his 
fortieth degree of latitude by saying that it ran 
twelve miles north of New Castle. For eigh- 
teen years Lord Baltimore had been claiming 
all or a part of this disputed territory on the 
Delaware from the Dutch, but the Dutch, who 
had defeated the Swedes and taken it away 
from them, refused to give up a foot of it, and 
Lord Baltimore did not care to fight about it, 
as the Dutch had pretty much their own way 
on the ocean blue, until the English finally con- 
quered the New Netherlands and took posses- 
sion of the Dutch settlements and all the lands, 
industries, chattels, and effects. 

Then when the King and the Duke of York 
granted these lands to William Penn, Lord 
Baltimore smote upon his chest and said he was 
a man of war, he would assert his rights, and 



^t. 39.] RECKONING WITHOUT HIS HOST. I 57 

he could whip any non-combatant Quaker that 
ever went out without his gun. Having none 
but Quakers to oppose him, and knowing they 
would not fight, he bristled up, made a formal 
demand for all the country in Pennsylvania and 
its annexed territories south of the fortieth 
degree of north latitude, and in the spring of 
1684 sent a miUtary column, under Colonel 
Talbot, to occupy several plantations in the 
lower counties, and immediately after his last 
conference with Penn wrote to the Marquis of 
Halifax and Secretary Blaythwarte, in London, 
an account of the meeting, very naturally and 
properly telling the true statement in the man- 
ner best calculated to count the most for Balti- 
more. *' My motto in this boundary war," he 
wrote, '' is the.old war-cry of our fathers, ' Fifty- 
four forty or fight.'"* Lord Baltimore felt 
very easy over the boundary dispute now. " I 
am a little ashamed to fight a Quaker," he said, 
'' it is so safe and so easy, but PU have to throw 
him if he won't lie down." 



* But then remembering that his fathers who raised that cry 
were not fathers until long after his son was a grandfather, he 
scratched out that sentence. 



158 WILLIAM PENN. [1683. 

Alas for Lord Baltimore ! Other men had 
lelt just that way about it before him. But 
they never felt that way after William Penn let 
go of them. 



CHAPTER X. 

IN THE COURT OF THE KING. 

pENN landed in England in October, and met 
-■■ a cheerful and exhilarating welcome. His 
wife was convalescent, but still poorly ; the 
children had all been sick, but were now con- 
sidered out of danger ; his old friend Algernon 
Sidney had been beheaded, the persecutions of 
all non-conformists had begun again with new 
and harsher violence, the prisons were full of 
his brethren the Friends, as usual, and society 
and political circles were full of all sorts of 
malicious slanSers and libellous stories and 
rumors about himself. Penn was deeply im- 
pressed. He hummed a few strains of " Home, 
sweet home," before he remembered that song 
had not yet been written. 

He visited with his family a few days, and 
then went straight to court to see the King and 
the Duke of York and get in his best work in 
the boundary business. Lord Baltimore was 



l6o WILLIAM PENN. [1684, 

there ahead of him, and while Penn was re- 
ceived very cordially, he " found things in gen- 
eral with another face than when he left them ; 
sour and stern, and resolved to hold the reins 
of power with a stiffer hand than heretofore, 
especially over those that were observed to be 
state or church dissenters." No wonder the 
Quaker Governor thought that "to keep fair 
with a displeased and resolved government, that 
had weathered its point upon Penn's own party, 
" humbled and mortified them, and was daily 
improving all its advantages upon them, was a 
difficult task to perform." 

The solution of the boundary question dragged 
along, with very little attention. Charles's health 
was failing rapidly and he did not take so much 
interest in the far-away colonies of the new 
world as in another foreign country, an un- 
known realm, that was a great way farther off 
from him than Pennsylvania. So the two Gov- 
ernors waited patiently for a change of kings, 
Penn engaging all his time and influence in suc- 
coring distressed Quakers, interceding for par- 
dons, and getting people out of prison, so that 
others might be put in ; for the prison cells were 
always kept warm, and usually with Quakers, 



^t. 41.] CHARLES BLESSES THE WORLD. Ibl 

SO long as there were enough of them to go 
around. He settled the flying rumors derog- 
atory to his own character as a man and a 
Friend. It was even reported that he was an 
iron-clad Quaker, armed to the teeth ; that he 
built a fort at New Castle and mounted a lot 
of guns, in casemates and en barbette, with in- 
tent to do bodily harm to some belligerent Pres- 
byterian or stray Baptist hunting for a sandy 
beach and waist-deep water. But Penn knocked 
all this terrible fort about his enemies' ears with 
a letter. He said there were some old cannon 
lying on the ground or swinging in broken car- 
riages at New Castle when he went there, but 
there wasn't a round of shot nor an ounce of 
powder, " and had not been since he landed ; 
and he could no more be charged with warlike 
propensities on their account than could a man 
who happened to buy a house with an old 
musket in it." " Because," said this skilful 
pamphleteer, " I find a blonde hair in my butter, 
I do not shriek out that there is a woman in the 
churn." 

On the 6th of February Charles the Second, 
feeling that humanity rather expected something 
good of him, benefited mankind by dying. It 



1 62 WILLIAM PENN. [1685. 

was the last act of his life, and about the one 
solitary good deed he ever performed. After a 
reign in which unblushing vice and the immo- 
rality of the time were illustrated in the charac- 
ter of the King — a King who was nicknamed 
" Old Goat" by one who best knew him — a reign 
in which "■ the caresses of harlots and the jests 
of buffoons regulated the manners of a govern- 
ment which had just ability enough to deceive 
and just religion enough to persecute" — the 
King died in a fit, the result of his horrible ex- 
cesses and vices.* Thus the world was happily 
quit of a " hcentious debauchee, persecuting 
sceptic, and faithless ruler." 

For such a good man, William Penn was de- 
cidedly unfortunate in his royal friends and 
acquaintances. He said in a letter to Thomas 
Lloyd, '' He was an able man for a troubled and 
divided kingdom," probably the worst thing 
Penn ever said. 



* It is very singular that he should have died, because Penn 
writes : " As he sat down to shave, his head twitched both ways 
or sides, and he gave a shriek and fell as dead, and so remained 
for some hours; they opportunely blooded and cupped him, and 
plied his head with red-hot frying-pans'''' I And yet the patient 
died. One would suppose such treatment would cure a para- 
lytic in a minute. 



vEt. 41.] A MIRACLE-WORKING MONARCH. 1 63 

During the reign of Charles more than fifteen 
thousand famiUes had been ruined for opinion's 
sake, in the name of the Church ; four thousand 
of these victims of persecution died in loathsome 
prisons. And, think of it! in five years this 
monarch " touched 23,601 of his subjects for 
the scrofula, or king's evil ; the bishops of the 
Church of England invented a sort of heathen 
service for the occasion ;" the '' unchristianlike, 
superstitious ceremony was performed in pub- 
lic ;" and Dr, Wiseman, an eminent physician of 
that time, writing of scrofula, says : "• However, 
I must needs profess that his Majesty cureth 
more in one year than all the chirurgeons of 
London have done in an age." 

Be it said to the credit of James, — so few things 
can be said to his credit, — that while he was Duke 
of York he had often protested against some 
of the vices and the persecutions which marred 
his brother's reign, if a reign without one redeem- 
ing quality can be said to be marred by any 
particular vice. And now that he was King, he 
was moved to be more indulgent. Penn waited 
upon him very promptly in behalf of the im- 
prisoned Quakers, and James, avowing himself 
a Catholic, promised to do what he could to 



164 WILLIAM PENN. [1685. 

secure toleration for dissenters. He told Penn 
he was going to be open and above-board. 
Penn expressed his approval of his frankness, 
and further hoped that " we should come in for 
a share." The King smiled, and said '' he 
desired not that peaceable people should be dis- 
turbed for their religion." Not a great while 
after, by releasing persons confined in prison 
merely for refusing to take the oaths of alle- 
giance and supremacy, 1,200 Quakers were set 
at liberty. James was inclined to be very in- 
dulgent. He had been a sufferer from perse- 
cution himself, and knew what it tasted like. 
It may barely be that his motives in opening 
the prison-doors were manly and honorable. 
But he was a Stuart, and it was more likely that 
some lurking meanness impelled him to acts of 
simple justice and common decency. But an 
honest man was such a rarity in those times* 
that people were disposed to magnify and cele- 
brate the smallest acts of common humanity 
without questioning the motives that led to 
their commission. 

James had been the friend and guardian of 

* Except in the prisons. 



^t. 41.] PENN'S INFLUENCE AT COURT. 1 65 

William Penn, ever since the dying Admiral 
committed his Quaker son to the care and good 
offices of his royal patrons. The acquaintance 
and intimacy then begun ripened rapidly now, 
and the Quaker spent a great deal of his time at 
court. His enemies made the most, and the 
worst, of this favor with which he was received 
at the court of a Catholic monarch, who 
dropped on his knees before the Papal nuncio, 
went daily and publicly to mass at Whitehall, 
and permitted the Jesuits to build a college in 
London. 

But there were still hundreds of poor Qua- 
kers kept in jail for non-payment of jailor's fees, 
it being an ancient English idea that if a man had 
no money, and you kept him where he couldn't 
by any possibility get any, he would by and by 
pay you in full. Penn felt that it was for their 
suffering sakes he was now placed near the 
throne. Then, too, while he pleaded with James 
for religious liberty and the release of the suf- 
fering Quakers, he could now and then prod his 
Majesty a little on that Maryland boundary 
business, and so open the prison-doors, and 
crowd Lord Baltimore down south of the 
fortieth degree of latitude. He moved his fam- 



1 66 WILLIAM PENN. [1685. 

ily to town that he might be always at the King's 
elbow, and every day found him at White- 
hall. Be it said that he used his influence with 
the king tor good, and was earnest in his efforts 
not alone for his own society of Friends, and his 
own personal interest, but for other Christian 
denominations suffering persecution. His in- 
fluence upon James was undoubtedly of the 
best. But James's influence upon Penn was not 
likely to improve the Quaker's morals to any 
alarming extent. 

As Penn was known to have considerable in- 
fluence with the administration, large numbers 
of people who could not reach the King, but 
could crowd in on Penn, thronged his house in 
Kensington, and overwhelmed him with pe- 
titions and recommendations and applications 
and addresses and advice and all the usual 
diversity of documents that flow in upon a new 
government. 

Among the first favors he asked of the King 
was a pardon for John Locke, whom Charles 
had meanly stripped of his honors and dignities 
and cast out of the University of Oxford, " of 
which he was the chiefest ornament." The 
exiled philosopher went to the Hague, where 



^t. 41.] A GENERAL UTILITY MAN. 167 

he busied himself with his great work on the 
" Human Understanding." James had been a 
consenting party to Locke's banishment, but, at 
Penn's intercession, he readily granted the par- 
don. Like George Fox, however, the philoso^ 
pher refused to accept a pardon when he had 
committed no crime, and he remained steadfast 
to this view of his duty. 

Penn seems to have been a general mediator 
for everybody at this time. He assisted Pop- 
ple, Locke's personal and political friend, out of 
some serious troubles in France. Retired and 
exiled Whigs came or sent to him, and found a 
friend in him. He interceded for everybody in 
trouble, and sometimes got into startling scenes 
with his royal patron on this account. On one 
occasion, at the request of a prominent Whig, 
Penn asked for a pardon for Aaron Smith, a 
man to whom he had never spoken. At the 
mention of his name the King flew into a terri- 
ble rage ; angrily declared that he would do no 
such thing; said that six fellows like Smith 
would put the three kingdoms in a flame ; de- 
clared there were too many Smiths anyhow, 
and threatened to turn Penn out of the room. 
He was only temporarily silenced, and the 



1 68 WILLIAM PENN. [1685. 

next time he preferred his request, he found the 
King in a better humor and got the pardon he 
wanted. 

Of course Penn's enemies — and a man of his 
force of character had plenty of them — made the 
most of this close intimacy between the CathoKc 
monarch and the Quaker, and the report was 
rapidly circulated that Penn himself was a 
Papist, a Catholic of Catholics, a Jesuit, edu- 
cated at St. Omer's, the great Jesuit seminary. 
Even Dr. Tillotson, afterward Archbishop of 
Canterbury, whom Penn esteemed as "first of 
his robe," was troubled and filled with doubts 
by these rumors. Day by day the stories grew, 
until it was said that Penn " had matriculated in 
the Jesuits* college, had taken holy orders at 
Rome, and now regularly officiated in the ser- 
vice of mass in the private chapel at Whitehall." 
Many began to believe that he was the Pope in 
disguise and carried the Holy Inquisition around 
in his hat. Such an opportunity to write a pam- 
phlet was not to be thrown away. Penn printed 
a little one, " Fiction Found Out," but it was not 
very interesting. It had lost the old ring of the 
early days when his pamphlets were shod with 
fire and tempered in aqua fortis. The womanly 



iEt. 41.] THE INSINUATIONS REPELLED. 169 

influence of Guli was evident in his preaching 
and his pamphlets, and his enemies and friends 
fared better because of his gentle Quaker wife. 
But then, his pamphlets were not such" interest- 
ing reading for the general public as they used 
to be when he drew blood or blisters every time 
he hit. He wrote a letter to Dr. Tillotson, 
which satisfied him, and their old friendship 
was renewed. The Doctor himself set to work 
to deny the stories of Penn's Jesuitism, but this 
only made matters worse, for people now said 
he was more of a Jesuit than ever, and they 
could prove it by Dr. Tillotson. The grade of 
public intelligence was at a very high ebb at 
that time. You had to put a man in prison, 
and in some instances cut off his head, before 
you could get him to understand what you 
meant. 

All this time the boundary dispute, that 
brought Penn to England, dragged along like a 
Congressional investigation. James was natu- 
rally well disposed to Governor Penn, but all 
these disputes of boundaries and rights, the petty 
and annoying disagreements between the colo- 
nies and the Crown, the quarrels and collisions 
between the all-pervading royal tax-collector 



170 WILLIAM PENN [1685. 

and the tax-hating colonist, were damaging the 
interests of all the proprietors in America, and 
the home Government sometimes half wished 
America had never been discovered. 

When Penn presented his formal petition, a 
council was at once called to take the subject 
into final consideration, and the King himself 
was present at the meeting of the board. It 
appeared that a considerable portion of the 
peninsula between the Chesapeake and the 
Delaware was included in both charters, and 
both proprietors wanted all of it. After the 
claims were gone into with great minuteness, 
James settled the dispute very promptly. He 
divided the debatable ground in two equal 
parts ; the eastern half he gave to Lord Balti- 
more, as his right, and the western half he kept 
himself, to keep it out of future litigation. As 
there were only two halves, William Penn was 
left, and as he went home after that council he 
kept repeating to himself as he went along, 
*'What do 1 see in this for Jones?"* James 
always intimated that he was going to give his 
half of the peninsula to Penn, some time when 

* Penn wrote a very affecting pamphlet upon this decision, 
entitled "Scoop Tout." 



iEt. 41.] MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. I7I 

Lord Baltimore had forgotten all about it, but 
then he always acted as though he was going 
to keep it himself also, — which he did, so long as 
he kept his kingdom. For all the new land on 
the peninsula he got, William Penn might as 
well have remained in Pennsylvania, and indeed 
it would have been money in his pocket if he 
had. He didn't find much of anything but 
trouble in England. As for this Maryland and 
Pennsylvania boundary, it was a baleful seed of 
trouble and troubles to come, for not until 1762 
was it finally settled, and then it was surveyed 
by two engineers sent for that purpose from 
England, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, 
and became the famous Mason-and-Dixon's line 
that bred much grief for the states of the union 
that succeeded the colonies. 

He received official information from his 
province that the Quakers had held several re- 
ligious meetings with the Indians, and the In- 
dians had listened with great patience to v/hat- 
ever was said, were deepty affected by the 
meetings, always seemed to be very glad when 
they were over, and the same Indians never 
came back to another one. 

The citizens who still resided in caves were 



1/2 WILLIAM PENN. [1685. 

this year disciplined, because these holes in the 
ground were sinks of iniquity, and for general 
depravity and freedom of conduct were proto- 
types of modern beer-dives. And the Council 
had therefore ordered these caves to be de- 
stroyed, as Philadelphia was by that time so 
prosperous that every man could live in a house, 
and have some front steps to scrub every Satur- 
day morning and fall over every Saturday 
night. The Indians had been called together 
and informed that they could have rum, subject 
to the same pains and penalties that were in- 
flicted upon the white people when they tarried 
too long at the jug, a condition which the In- 
dians joyfully accepted. All the early* history 
of the great republic, indeed, appears to be 
most intimately and inseparably connected with 
rum. This year several Indians came before 
the Council with grave complaints against the 
servants of Jasper Farman, who, the Indians 
averred, had made them drunk. A warrant 
was immediately issued for these unfaithful and 
bibulous servants, but the constable who under- 

* And later. 



^t. 41.1 REFORM IS NECESSARY. 1 73 

took to serve it got lost in the woods, or himself 
succumbed to the potency of the rum on Far- 
man's place, it isn't certain which, and the trial 
was postponed until the next day. At that time 
Jasper Farman's servants appeared and were 
ready for trial, but the prosecuting witnesses 
were not on hand, and a messenger being sent 
for them, they were found at home, filled with 
fire-water even unto the eyes, and so drunken 
they could not remember their own nor each 
other's names. 

Penn, among other things, sent peremptory 
instructions to Thomas Lloyd, President of the 
Council, that the number of drinking-houses in 
Philadelphia should be reduced, without respect 
of persons ; he deprecated the heavy charges to, 
which people buying lands had been subjected, 
and denounced ^' three warrants for one pur- 
chase" as ''an abominable thing." He was 
grieved and displeased with T. Holme for im- 
proper charges in his department ; especially 
on the score of drinking-collations, a bill of 
twelve pounds, amounting to one quarter of the 
whole purchase of the land, having been sent in 
to a purchaser for expenses incurred in this 



174 WILLIAM PENN. [1685. 

way.* And the absent Governor mourned be- 
cause animosities had begun to creep into the 
government, and made up his mind that he 
would come back to his province in the follow- 
ing autumn, unless something happened to pre- 
vent. And the very next mail which came 
wandering along some time that year brought 
him the reassuring news that Nicholas Moore, 
one of his most trusted officials, president of the 
Free Society of Traders, whom he had appointed 
one of the provincial judges, had been by the 
Assembly impeached, on ten counts, of divers 
high crimes and misdemeanors. 

Penn's presence was more and more needed 
in his province every day, the boundary question 
was settled so far as he was concerned, all the 
prison-doors had been unhinged that he could 
open ; dissensions, bickerings, jealousies were 
growing in his province, and still he lingered in 
England and went to court every day, although 
he hadn't a case on the docket and not a ghost 
of a show for being drawn on the jury. 

The flames of civil war were kindled in Eng- 
land as soon as James was fairly seated on the 

* Poor Governor Penn! he had never seen the itemized ex- 
pense account of a Congressional delegation at a funeral. 



^t. 41. J A HARD CROWD FOR A CHRISTIAN 1/5 

throne, but the insurrection was ahnost instantly 
crushed. Monmouth and Grey were taken pris- 
oners, and then began the rule of the infamous 
Jeffreys, the judge who had condemned Alger- 
non Sidney to the block; the judge ''after 
James's own heart," who *' was not redeemed 
from his vices by one solitary virtue." England 
flowed with blood, and Jeffreys wreaked his 
own bloodthirsty malice and the vengeance of 
his royal master on hundreds of unfortunates 
who were unable to purchase pardons ; for when 
James did not behead a rebel he robbed him, and 
after the robbery generally transported him so 
that he couldn't annoy him by complaining 
about it. Penn protested against all this cruelty 
and waste of life. He was ever outspoken and 
fearless in his denunciation of Jeffreys, even in 
the hour of that bloodthirsty judge's greatest 
power, openly speaking of him as ''that butcher" 
and protesting against the "run of barbarous 
cruelty" due to " Jeffreys' cruel temper." His 
protests appear to have been useless, his connec- 
tion with the court laid him open to suspicion 
and calumny, and it is at this very time the Ma- 
caulay charges are laid against him. James and 
Jeffreys, — it would be wonderful indeed if any 



176 WILLIAM PENN. [1685. 

man could stand near to those two and escape 
censure. William Penn was a good man, but 
when he was at court he had to mingle with a 
hard crowd.* Still in all his intercourse with 
James, and amidst all the venality, cruelty, and 
heartlessness of the court, Penn's character 
shines out of its base surroundings, a diamond 
in a setting of brass. There was never a time 
when the Quaker's voice and influence were not 
for mercy and religious toleration, and in spite 
of the malicious slanders of his enemies, the cor- 
ruption of the court he frequented left no stain 
on his hands. Well was it for the persecuted 
non-conformists, — Baptist, Methodist, Presby- 
terian, and Quaker alike — that in such perilous 
times, in that long dark night of proscription 
and persecution, the dungeon, the fagot, and 
the block, they had one friend of influence at 
the Stuarts' elbow. It may be true that Penn's 
colony suffered while he was at court, but none 
the less did he suffer, and the loss of free Penn- 
sylvania was the gain of English dissent. 

* He was very good. Even his best friends and apologists 
admit this. On one occasion while he was preaching, some of 
his enthusiastic admirers in the congregation made a rush at 
him, shouting, "Oh, kill him, kill him! He is too good to 
live!" 



^t. 41.] THE GALLOWS AND THE FAGGOT. IJJ 

But James and his court were deaf to all 
promptings of humanity, and punished the de- 
feated rebels with malignant cruelty. In trans- 
porting them, they sent the poor Whigs and 
dissenters to the High Tory and Catholic owners 
of unhealthful West India islands, where the 
exiles would find the climate and their rulers 
equally uncomfortable. Not more than twenty 
were permitted to go to Pennsylvania, or any 
other settlement tinctured with humanity. Cor- 
nish, an ex-sheriff of London, was gibbeted be- 
fore his own house, as the accomplice of Sidney 
and Russell. Penn vainly begged for his life, 
and stood near him when he died, and after his 
death boldly vindicated his memory from the 
savage accusations made against him. Through 
his influence the mutilated limbs of Cornish, 
scattered about after his execution, were gathered 
up and restored to his friends. From the exe- 
cution of the ex-sheriff, Penn went to Tyburn to 
see Elizabeth Gaunt burned at the stake for 
harboring a rebel in her house. Until the pit- 
iless flames silenced her, she declared her inno- 
cence, and Penn, who had interceded with all 
hi^ power for her life, could only stand near 
her to catch her protestations and carry them 



1/8 WILLIAM PENN. [1685. 

back to the King, there to quote them as argu- 
ments against other executions. 

But for all these words and works of mercy 
the court and the creatures of James did not 
love Penn, and to punish him for what they 
deemed his interference with executions, banish- 
ments, and the general extortion of ransoms, 
the Crown lawyers, under direction of the min- 
ister, issued a quo warranto'^ against his pro- 
vince of Pennsylvania, and compelled him to 
vacate his charter. These proceedings, how- 
ever, were summarily stopped by the King. 

Meanwhile, the more James expressed his op- 
position to all penal laws against religious of- 
fences, the more the Church of England sus- 
tained and approved them. The repeal of the 
Test Act meant toleration for Catholics as well 
as dissenting Protestants, and it was apparent 
to the churchmen that James, caring nothing 
for the Baptist, Methodist, or Quaker, was only 
paving the way for the subversion of the estab- 
lished church and the reintroduction of Popery 



* A dreadful thing. It had a big knob at one end, and a 
sharp point at the other, with great lumps and spikes all the 
way between, and was as long as a stick of wood It was much 
used in the time of James. 



iEt. 41.] TOO MUCH TOLERATION. I/Q 

as the state religion, and then — -the liberal, un- 
fettered toleration which the Catholic Church, 
in countries where it was in power, granted all 
Protestant denominations would be enjoyed in 
England. The churchmen, seeing James sur- 
rounded by ultra-papists and Jesuits, were al- 
ready looking to the Prince of Orange, and 
James, seeing this and knowing its significance, 
told William Penn that if he was going on a 
missionary tour through Holland by and by, he 
had a message he wished him to carry to the 
Hague. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE WAY OF THE MACHINE. 

IT THY CERT'NLY," said Penn, - and it is a 
^ • most singular coincidence. I was just this 
minute thinking I would run over to Holland and 
rub up my Dutch a little. I understand a tribe 
of Pennsylvania-Dutch Indians have been dis- 
covered out near Doylestown m my province, 
and I want to be able to talk to them like a 
Kansas land-agent when I go back." And he 
cleared for Holland the next day, with a mixed 
cargo of religion and politics, — largely politics, 
with enough religion in the hold for a good 
moral ballast. As the informal envoy of James, 
he was to tell William of Orange that his good 
father-in-law was a liberal man and a Christian ; 
that he opposed all religious tests and penal 
laws ; he believed in perfect religious liberty 
and an unfettered public and private conscience, 
and he wanted to know what opinions the gen- 
tleman from the Hague held on these matters, 



iEt. 42.] A PRINCE ON THE TEST ACT, l8l 

and also what he would take to aid this liberal 
king to pass an act of toleration for all creeds 
and opinions, and obtain a repeal of the Test Act. 

The gentleman from the Hague thought he 
rather understood his father-in-law. He had 
ge-married once into dot femilies already, und 
of he was his beesness geknowen, it was taken 
a bigger man than his fader-un-law und diesen 
archiquaecker to puUen de eyes over his wool. 
He intimated that if his father-in-law ever did a 
good thing, it was from a bad motive ; he knew 
the family all through, his wife was a Stuart, 
and he could see clear through James's little 
game. As for himself, he declared '' dot he was 
an Englander ge-born, und he vas opposet auf 
some foreign dominations on English affairs, 
und he would^ not haf some of it. Dot's bees- 
ness," said William of Orange firmly, like the 
bold Briton that he was, *' und when I was over 
de Shannel ge-kommen you was wish you will 
leave me alone dot Test Axes."* 

When he had discharged his cargo of politics, 

* Penn corrected the inflexible Englishman, saying, "Test 
Act." "Oh," replied the other William, "is it only one? I 
dhought it was a dozens of it. Exes or hetchets, it makes me 
no difference." 



1 82 WILLIAM PENN. [1686. 

William Penn turned his attention to the Eng- 
lish exiles for conscience' sake, the native 
Quakers, and worked up a good emigration- 
scheme for the province of Pennsylvania. Penn 
was a man literally and zealously "diligent in 
business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." 
He had his account of Pennsylvania, a document 
built on the same ground-plan as a Nebraska 
B and M land circular of to-day, translated into 
Flemish and circulated among the farmers; he 
travelled through Holland and the Rhineland, 
and told the people that Pennsylvania was as big 
as a prairie, and that Germantown was next to 
Philadelphia and easily accessible by the street- 
cars and two lines of railroad. 

When he returned to London, he sought the 
ear of the King, and found it,* and filled it with 
petitions for the pardon of exiled Presbyterians 
and other dissenters. When Penn entered into 
controversy with an opponent, he was pitiless. 
When he hit a Presbyterian preacher with a 
loaded pamphlet, that Presbyterian went right 
off into the woods and lay down and died. 
But when he found a Presbyterian or any other 

* Right on the King, between the temporal bone and the 
back of the neck. 



JEt. 42.] A DISTRESSED BARONET. 1 83 

non-conformist in trouble, he had oil for his 
wounds, balm for his hurts, and money for his 
hotel-bill. Through his influence many exiles 
were brought back to their homes. Many 
of these men and their children remembered 
the Quaker most gratefully for his goodness 
of heart. Others repaid him in the usual coin 
of the world. They kicked him and told lies 
about him, and were only pleased with him 
when he got into trouble. Indiscriminate 
goodness is sometimes a mistake. There are 
some men whom, if you see them drowning, 
it is best to let drown, without interference. 
If you pulled them out of the river, they would 
sue you at law for laying violent hands upon 
them. This is especially true in poHtics. 

Among others for whom he ^ecured pardons 
was Sir Robert Steuart of Coltness. Penn met 
him in London after his return, and congratu- 
lated him in very difficult Latin, at which Sir 
Robert burst into tears, knowing he could not 
construe it, and fearing he would be flogged or 
kept in after school. 

"Ah, Mr. Penn," he sighed, ''the Earl of 
Arran has got my estate, and I fear my situa- 
tion is now about to be worse than ever." 



1 84 WILLIAM PENN. [1686. 

"What, man !" exclaimed Penn, " is thee going 
to lose thy job ? Come to my house to-morrow, 
and I will set matters to rights for thee." 

Penn went directly to Arran. " What is this, 
friend James," he said to him, '' that I hear of 
thee ? Thou hast taken possession of Coltness's 
estate. Thou knowest that it is not tJiine'' 

" That estate,** says Arran, " I paid a great 
price for. I received no other reward for my 
expensive and troublesome embassy in France 
except this estate ; and I am certainly much out 
of pocket by the bargain." 

'' All very well, friend James," said the Qua- 
ker, '' but of this assure thyself, that if thou dost 
not give me this moment an order on thy cham- 
berlain for two hundred pounds to Coltness to 
carry him down to his native country, and 
a hundred a year to subsist on till matters are 
adjusted, I will make it as many thousands out 
of thy way with the King." 

Arran instantly complied, and Penn sent for 
Sir Robert and gave him the security. After 
the revolution Sir Robert, with the rest, had 
full restitution of his estate ; and Arran was 
obliged to account for all the rents he had re- 



^t. 42.] THE LAY OF THE QUIT RENTS. 1 85 

ceived, against which this payment only was 
allowed to be stated. 

This authentic narrative from the Earl of 
Buchan's writings beautifully illustrates Wil- 
liam Penn's fine sense of honor and justice when 
another man took an estate from one of his 
friends to reward himself for political services. 
Just why it never occurred to him to apply this 
principle to the estates of the Penn family 
in Ireland, acquired in a similar manner alike 
from the commonwealth and the monarchy, 
from Cromwell and Charles, for political in- 
trigues and hard fighting on both sides, — is a 
question which lack of space forbids us to dis- 
cuss. But perhaps he didn't have time. And 
then, Penn was an Englishman and his confis- 
cated estates were in Ireland and naturally didn't 
count, at that time — nor at any other time. 

All was not well at this time over in the 
province he loved, and his heaviest troubles lay 
in the city that was nearest his heart. The 
province was prosperous, and well able to sup- 
port its Governor; certainly it could well afford 
to pay its honest obligations. But so long as 
Penn had plenty of money, he had supported 



1 86 WILLIAM PENN. [1686. 

himself and family, and maintained the provin- 
cial court at his own expense, and the freemen 
of the province were disposed to let him go on 
in the same way the remainder of his term. 
And at any rate, they were not going to pay 
any "quit-rents." The original terms on which 
Penn sold his lands in Pennsylvania were forty 
shillings in money and an annual quit-rent of 
one shilling for every hundred acres. Cheap 
enough, it would seem, but the thrifty Pennsyl- 
vanian protested against such an excessive tax 
as the quit-rent of one shilling a year for one 
hundred acres of land. 

They wouldn't, or at least they didn't, pay 
William Penn a shilling, nor yet a penny, of his 
quit-rents. On this very subject, writing back 
to the province, the Governor sayeth: "that 
his quit-rents were then at least of the value of 
five hundred pounds a year, and then due, 
though he could not get a penny. God is my 
w^itness," said he, " I lie not. I am above six 
thousand pounds out of pocket more than ever 
I saw by the province ; and you may throw in 
my pains, cares, and hazard of life, and leaving 
of my family and friends to serve them." " Be- 
sides," he writes again from London, " the coun- 



JEt. 42.] THE GOVERNOR WANTS THEM, 1 87 

try think not of my supply (and I resolve never 
to act the Governor, and keep another family 
and capacity on my private estate), if my table, 
cellar, and stable may be provided for, with a 
barge and yacht, or sloop, for the service of 
Governor and government, I may try to get 
hence ; for, in the sight of God, I am six thou- 
sand pounds and more behindhand, more than 
ever I received or saw for land in that province. 
— There is nothing my soul breathes more for 
in this world, next my dear family's life, than 
that I may see poor Pennsylvania again — but 
I cannot force my way hence, and see nothing 
done on that side inviting." 

It is estimated that by this time Penn had 
sold about one million acres of land, for which 
he had receiv;ed ^^"20,000, all of which, and i^6,ooo 
out of his own pocket, he had spent in and on 
the province, in presents for the Indians and 
payments for their land, and in other public 
matters, and now he could not collect his quit- 
rents from the colonists. This shows what kind 
of people were the early settlers of Pennsyl- 
vania. If Penn tells the truth, not one solitary 
beggar of them, Quaker or Gentile, Jew, Greek, 
or barbarian, paid up his quit-rent, for he declares 



1 88 WILLIAM PENN. [1686. 

he " could not get one penny," No wonder he 
could not see anything on this side " inviting." 
The early settlers of Pennsylvania did not be- 
lieve in quit-rents. There was an air of feudal- 
ism about that sort of thing which they resented. 
They were the original land-leaguers, and they 
Boycotted their own Governor and benefactor, 
not for meanness, but on principle. 

Worse than all this, his agents loaded sight 
drafts upon the poor man, and, as usual in such 
cases, timed them so they would reach him just 
when he was so short that if the whole State of 
Pennsylvania were offered at public vendue for 
a cent, he couldn't buy the village of Kittan- 
ning. 

" Now,* he writes to James Harrison. " I 
pray thee to draw upon me no more for one 
penny." Then he gets his back up and talks just 
as a Baptist would talk if he were a little mad. 
After complaining, and with justice, that the 
Council and Assembly omits all mention of his 
own name and the King's in its official acts, he 
says : " Next, I do desire thee to let no more 
mention be made of the supply, though *tis a 
debt, since a plain contract in the face of au- 
thority for a supply. I will sell my shirt off my 



^t. 42]. PENN ELEVATES HIS SPINE. 1 89 

back,* before I will trouble them any more. I 
shall keep the power and privileges I have left 
to the pitch, and recover the rest as their mis- 
behavior shall forfeit them back into my hands ; 
for I see I am to let them know that 'tis yet in my 
power to make them need me as much as I do 
their supply : though the disappointment of me 
in that, with above i^ 1,000 bills I paid since my 
return, have kept me from Pennsylvania above 
all other things, and yet may do. Nor will I 
ever come into that province with my family to 
spend my private estate, to fill up and discharge 
a public station, and so add more wrongs to 
my children. This is no anger, though 1 am 
grieved, but a cool and resolved thought." 

It is just as well that William explained that 
he was not angry, for he talked as any man 
not a Quaker talks when he is, so to speak, a 
"leetle riled." And nobody could blame him 
for setting up his bristles a trifle, under the 
circumstances. At any rate, he put his foot 
down, changed the form of the executive de- 
partment of his government, appointing five 
commissioners to act in his behalf, and in- 

*This indicates that Penn did not wear shirts that buttoned 
behind. 



190 WILLIAM PENN. [1686. 

structed them to keep an eye on the Council 
and Assembly, to abrogate all that had been 
done in his absence at the ver}- next session 
of the Assembly, and dismiss it immediately, 
then at once call it together again and re- 
enact such laws as they saw fit ; look closely to 
the qualifications of members of both houses, 
and enact, disannul, or vary any laws, the Gov- 
ernor himself reserving his right of confirma- 
tion, and all his '' peculiar royalties and advan- 
tages." 

That is the kind of repubhcan William Penn 
was when the Assembly of his own creation 
tried to leave him out. There was something 
of the old pamphlet fire still left in him, and he 
thought it was bad enough to be beat out of his 
quit-rents, without being crowded out of the 
government. And with all these perplexities 
and troubles on both sides of the Atlantic 
weighing upon him. Governor Penn felt how 
true was the remark of Friend Shakespeare, 
" Uneasy lies the head that *has to manage a 
mixed colony of Quakers, Baptists (Deep-water 
and Hard-shell), Presbyterians (Old School, 
New School, Cumberland, United, and Blue), 
Methodists (P. E., M. E., North, and South), 



^t. 42.] DECLARATION OF INDULGENCE. IQI 

Ranters (Jumpers and Jerkers), Episcopalians, 
Puritans, Catholics, English, Irish, Dutch, Ger- 
mans, Swedes, French, Norwegians, negroes, 
Welsh, and nineteen kinds of Indians." But 
still he did not lose his faith in Pennsylvania. 

Once more we turn from the troubles of the 
distant province to merry England, where mat- 
ters were reaching a crisis. James, supported 
by the opinions of his judges, on the i8th of 
March, 1687, issued the royal proclamation sus- 
pending all penal laws against religious offences, 
and forbidding the application of any test or 
the offer of any oath to persons who were ap- 
pointed or elected to office under the govern- 
ment. 

Had this declaration of indulgence come 
from any but a Stuart, the people of England 
might have received it with more unanimous 
grace. But the better James acted, the people 
argued, the worse he really was, and this was 
perhaps the correct estimate of this monarch. 
That he was sincere in his efforts to estabhsh 
the religion of Rome in England, no one doubts ; 
but as this w^as about the only piece of sincerity 
in his character, his declaration of indulgence 
was received with a great variety of emotions 



192 WILLIAM PENN. [1687. 

and sentiments. There were also grave ele- 
ments of civil danger in the declaration, and 
the English people generally looked upon the 
act with distrust. 

But all the same the poor dissenters who had 
been spending their valuable time in prisons 
and looking out upon the glad free sunshine 
between iron bars, thought the declaration 
that flung open their prison-doors was the 
very document needed to fill a long-felt want. 
And the poor creatures swarmed up to the 
throne witTi long, tiresome " addresses," by 
reading which they evidently hoped to kill the 
King, and thus be able to enjoy their freedom 
without the distressing encumbrance of being 
grateful to anybody for it. They thanked the 
King who had '' heard the cries of his suffering 
subjects for conscience' sake," after the afore- 
said sufferers had been howling in his ears 
nearly two years, and " since it pleased the King 
out of his great compassion to commiserate 
their afflicted condition," when the very dogs 
in the street pitied them and the dumb stones 
of their prisons cried out against their persecu- 
tion, and since " he gives his dissenting subjects" 
that they may say their prayers without taking 



iEt. 42.] HATS OFF ALL ROUND. 193 

a book to church to read them from, and be- 
cause " his most gracious Majesty the King 
had," for some inexplicable but undoubtedly 
selfish and wicked reason, performed an act 
of ordinary humanity and common decency, 
so unusual in his family, — then they were for- 
ever more his obliged, peaceable, loving, and 
faithful subjects, who had rather be kicked by a 
lord than shake hands with an honest carpenter, 
any day, and were going to show their eternal 
and supreme gratitude to their most gracious 
King just as soon as they could get a good 
whack at him, which would be when that 
gallant English prince, Wilhelm von Orange, 
arrived. 

In the excess of their joy and gratitude, when 
they went up with their address, the Quakers 
even agreed to " waive the ceremony of the 
hat," and, headed by William Penn, the deputa- 
tion entered the royal presence bareheaded. 

Penn felt so good over this declaration, in the 
proclamation of which he is said to have had 
great influence, that he wrote a pamphlet, and 
called it '' Good Advice to the Church of Eng- 
land, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Dissen- 
ter, In which it is Endeavored to be Made Ap- 



194 WILLIAM PENN. [1688. 

pear that it is their Duty with a big D, princi- 
ple with a large P, and Interest with a capital I, 
to Abolish the penal Laws and Tests." The 
title was originally much longer and covered 
both backs of the pamphlet, and people thought 
the good old times were come again. William 
Penn's pamphlets must have been a source of 
unfailing joy to the printer, for he wrote a free, 
easy, untrammelled hand, like the clambering 
woodbine as it corkscrews up an erratic water- 
elm. Something like Mr. Greeley's copper- 
plate text when he was in a hurry and didn't 
feel very well. 

When Penn wasn't at court, he was preach- 
ing, and as he wasn't away from court much of 
the time now, he took advantage of his attend- 
ance on the King in his progress through Berk, 
Gloucester, Worcester, Shrop, Che, Stafford, 
Warwick, Oxford, and Hamp Shire, to hold a 
few meetings by the way, one of which, at 
Chester, the King attended.* 

Penn now '' viewed with alarm" the situation 
at Whitehall, where the Jesuits had a control- 
ling and growing interest, and if he was influen- 

*It did not appear to do him any good, however. 



^t. 43.] A MUTUAL FRIEND. I95 

tial in bringing about the Declaration of Indul- 
gence, he began to see that he had invoked 
a spirit, so to speak, "as wouldn't curry nor 
skeer," and he didn't know what to do with it. 
In vain he approached the King with his boldest 
expostulations, and told him the nation was not 
only alarmed, but indignant. His influence 
was overborne by the Jesuit friends of James, 
who pressed him to obtain for Cathohcs a 
footing in the Universities. With this object in 
view, a pretext was easily found for prosecuting 
and dismissing Dr. Peachey from his office in 
Cambridge, and when the presidency of Mag- 
dalen College was vacant James named An- 
thony Farmer for election, and the Fellows 
promptly elected Dr. Hough. James censured 
the heads of .colleges for disobedience, and 
ordered a new election, which the Fellows did 
not hold. Both parties continuing obstinate, 
Penn casually dropped in to the quarrel as 
mutual friend and arbitrator. The Quaker was 
convinced that the Fellows were in the right: 
they could not yield without an evident breach 
of their oaths. The King's mandates were a 
force on conscience, and contrary therefore to 
the King's own intentions. Thus he wrote to 



196 WILLIAM PENN. [1688. 

the King-, and the collegians themselves de- 
livered the letter to his majesty, to save postage. 

His majesty was obstinate, and believed it 
impossible for churchmen to oppose the royal 
will. And, indeed, they would not when it 
coincided with their own. Oxford preached 
passive obedience when the axe and the Tower 
waited only for dissenting and commonwealth 
subjects. It was another thing when her own 
privileges were threatened. Penn still made 
efforts to reconcile the opposing forces. But 
while he felt the Fellows were right, and would 
not advise complete submission, he did insist 
that the King's self-love should be gratified a 
little; that his majesty did not like to be 
thwarted, and the dispute had gone on so long, 
they could not hope to be restored to the 
royal favor without making some concessions. 
Hough and the Fellows declared they had done 
all that was consistent with honesty and con- 
science, and besides they had a religion to de- 
fend. The Papists had already gotten Christ- 
church and University colleges. The present 
struggle was for Magdalen, and in a short time 
they threatened they would have the rest. 

''That," says Penn, *' they shall never li:ivc. 



JEt. 43.] MAGDALEN COLLEGE IN TROUBLE. 1 97 

assure yourselves. If once they proceed so far, 
they will quickly find themselves destitute of 
their present assistance. For my part, I have 
always declared my opinion that the prefer- 
ments of the church should not be put into any 
other hands but such as they at present are in ; 
but I hope you would not have the two Univer- 
sities such invincible bulwarks for the Church of 
England that none but they must be capable of 
giving their children a learned education. I 
suppose two or three colleges will content the 
Papists. Christchurch is a noble structure ; 
University is a pleasant place, and Magdalen 
College is a comely building." 

The Fellows opposed Penn's more liberal 
ideas, and then the King most graciously re- 
lieved him from any further mediation by 
ejecting the Fellows from the college, and 
stripping them of their honors and preferments. 

James, confident that Oxford and the church 
would loyally adhere to the doctrine of passive 
obedience taught by themselves, renewed the 
Declaration of Indulgence in April, and prom- 
ised that Parliament should meet in November. 
Ke issued an order in council, directing that the 
Declaration should be read in all churches. 



198 'WILLIAM PENN. [1688. 

Half a dozen bishops disobeyed the royal 
order, in violation of their own tenet of passive 
obedience, and were committed to the Tower. 
When they came up for trial they were trium- 
phantly acquitted, and the country applauded. 
That gallant English prince, William of Orange, 
came over w^ith a large assortment of armed 
Dutchmen. James sat down to count his friends 
on his fingers, and finding he had about four 
thumbs more than were necessary for a full 
tally-sheet, stayed not upon the order of his 
emigrating, but got him hence and into France 
with great speed and utter disregard of the 
customs proprieties. 



CHAPTER XII. 

ANOTHER LIE NAILED ! 

'TPHE historian and biographer of to-day, as 
-*■ in all times, find it much easier to locate 
the beam in their grandfather's eyes than to ex- 
tract the mote from their own or their neigh- 
bor's optics, although the mote of to-day con- 
cerns the present world far more than does the 
beam of yesterday. We look with horror and 
indignation at the wickedness, cruelty, super- 
stition, and general depravity of the courts of 
the Stuarts, when we write or read our his- 
tories, and forget, in the contemplation of by- 
gone evils, the dishonesty of our own day, the 
scheming tricker}^ that too often dishonors poli- 
tics and degrades statecraft to the level of the 
pot-house caucus. We remember Jeffreys, and 
forget the vile assassin who slew our own Presi- 
dent; with unutterable loathing we read how 
the bones of Cromwell were dragged from the 
sacred rest of the grave by the cavaliers whom 



200 WILLIAM PENN. 



[1688. 



he had winnowed like chaff while he lived, and 
forget the viler wretches who in our own day 
snarl in ghoulish hate about the grave of Gar- 
field, and with shameless malice seek to blacken 
his character before the crape is taken from the 
doors of the Capitol. 

So Macaulay, writing in his time, found it an 
easy matter to bring startling charges against 
William Penn. Penn was a good man, honest, 
conscientious, brave, and rather unfortunate in 
having for his friends such rascals as Charles 
and James. And yet, while his enemies have 
urged this against him, there were some reasons 
for this friendship, especially between Penn and 
James. When James, then Duke of York, was 
commander of the fleet, Penn's father was his 
bravest and best sailor, his trusted Admiral. 
Penn's father was intriguing for the restoration 
of Charles all the time he was drawing pay and 
begging estates from Cromwell, and he was the 
first man to welcome the graceless Stuart to his 
fleet. And for all this faithful service to them, 
the royal brothers loved Admiral Penn, and 
borrowed money of him as long as they could 
tap him. For his sake they loved his son, and 
when they owed him ^16,000, they made him 



JEt. 43-] * THE MACAULAY CHARGES. 201 

take his pay in wild lands in Pennsylvania, that 
Penn himself declares cost him more than he 
ever got out of them. The brothers loved him, 
and swindled him, and if any one can see where- 
in Penn was under any obligations to James, or 
why he should be a bosom friend of that mon- 
arch, his keen insight into human motives should 
be a great comfort to him. 

Macaulay himself, like the pugilist who shakes 
hands with his antagonist before he breaks his 
head, says : 

" To speak the whole truth concerning Penn 
is a task which requires some courage ; for he 
is rather a mythical than a historical person. 
Rival nations and hostile sects have agreed in 
canonizing him. England is proud of his name. 
A great commonwealth beyond the Atlantic 
regards him with a reverence similar to that 
which the Athenians felt for Theseus, and the 
Romans for Quirinus. The respectable society 
of which he was a member honors him as an 
apostle. By pious men of other persuasions he 
is generally regarded as a bright pattern of 
Christian virtue. Meanwhile, admirers of a 
very different sort have sounded his praises. 
The French philosophers of the eighteenth cen- 



202 WILLIAM PENN. • [1688. 

tury pardoned what they regarded as his super- 
stitious fancies in consideration of his contempt 
for priests, and of his cosmopolitan benevolence, 
impartially extended to all races and to all 
creeds. His name has thus become, through- 
out all civilized countries, a synonym for prob- 
ity and philanthropy. 

" Nor is this high reputation altogether un- 
merited. Penn was without doubt a man of 
eminent virtues. He had a strong sense of re- 
ligious duty, and a fervent desire to promote 
the happiness of mankind. On one or two 
points of high importance he had notions more 
correct than were in his day common, even 
among men of enlarged minds ; and as the pro- 
prietor and legislator of a province, which, be- 
ing almost uninhabited when it came into his 
possession, afforded a clear field for moral ex- 
periments, he had the rare good fortune of 
being able to carry his theories into practice 
without any compromise, and yet without any 
shock to existing institutions. He will always 
be mentioned with honor as the founder of a 
colony who did not, in his dealings with a sav- 
age people, abuse the strength derived from 
civilization, and as a lawgiver who, in an age of 



iEt. 43.] THE MACAULAY CHARGES. 203 

persecution, made religious liberty the corner- 
stone of a polity. But his writings and his life 
furnish abundant proofs that he was not a man 
of strong sense. He had no skill in reading the 
characters of others. His confidence in persons 
less virtuous than himself led him into great 
errors and misfortunes. His enthusiasm for 
one great principle sometimes impelled him to 
violate other great principles which he ought to 
have held sacred. Nor was his integrity alto- 
gether proof against the temptations to which 
it was exposed in that splendid and polite but 
deeply corrupted society with which he now 
mingled. The whole court was in a ferment 
with intrigues of gallantry and intrigues of am- 
bition. The traffic in honors, places, and par- 
dons was incessant. It was natural that a man 
who was daily seen at the palace, and who was 
known to have free access to majesty, should be 
frequently importuned to use his influence for 
purposes which a rigid morahty must condemn. 
The integrity of Penn had stood firm 'against 
obloquy and persecution. But now, attacked 
by royal smiles, by female blandishments, by 
the insinuating eloquence and delicate flattery 
of veteran diplomatists and courtiers, his resolu- 



204 WILLIAM PENN. [1688. 

tion began to give way. Titles and phrases 
against which he had often borne his testimony 
dropped occasionally from his lips and pen. It 
would be well if he had been guilty of nothing 
worse than such compliances with the fashions 
of the world. Unhappily, it cannot be con- 
cealed that he bore a chief part in some transac- 
tions condemned not merely by the society to 
which he belonged, but by the general sense of 
all honest men. He afterward solemnly pro- 
tested that his hands were pure from iUicit gain, 
and that he never received any gratuity from 
those whom he had obliged, though he might 
easily, while his influence at court lasted, have 
made 120,000 pounds. To this assertion full 
credit is due. But bribes may be offered to 
vanity as well as cupidity, and it is impossible 
to deny that Penn was cajoled into bearing a 
part in some unjustifiable transactions of which 
others enjoyed the profits." 

Thus we see how Penn was impaled on the 
quill of the great essayist because he forgot 
what he had so often scrawled in his copy-book 
at the grammar-school in Chigwell, *' Evil com- 
munications corrupt good manners." He 
trained in a hard crowd, and people naturally 



^t. 43.] THE MACAULAY CHARGES. 205 

wondered what a good man could be doing at 
the court of James. Still, it was very necessary 
for one honest man to be near the King, and in 
forming its judgment mankind must remember 
that one greater and better and wiser than 
William Penn had also eaten with publicans and 
sinners. Penn, however, while he seemed to 
mingle freely enough with the sinners, didn't 
waste much time on the publicans. Nothing 
under a King for Governor Penn. 

In Hbelling a better man than himself, Macau- 
lay formulates his charges in five counts : 

I. That Penn's connection with the court of 
James caused his own Society of Friends to 
look on him coldly and treat him with obloquy. 

II. That he accepted the royal mission to ex- 
tort money from the girls of Taunton for the 
Maids of Honor. 

III. That he allowed himself to be employed 
in the work of seducing Kiffin into compliance 
with the designs of the court. 

IV. That he sought to secure William's as- 
sent to the edict of James, suspending the penal 
laws. And 

V. That he endeavored to seduce the Fellows 
of Magdalen College from the path of right. 



206 WILLIAM PENN. [1688. 

These charges have been satisfactorily met at 
every point, and refuted by Dixon and others, 
and still more ably and fully by Samuel M. 
Janney in his most excellent " Life of Penn," 
and Penn's character is made to shine only the 
more brightly by the vigorous polishing it re- 
ceived at the hands of Macaulay. On the first 
count, that ^' Penn's own sect regarded him with 
coldness," it is more than probable that some of 
them did. Even Clarkson thinks that many of 
the Friends thought he meddled too much in 
politics. But these were Friends who were out 
of prison. Whenever a zealous Quaker found 
himself on the wrong side of the lock, he im- 
mediately became convinced that William Penn 
at court was the right man in the right place, 
and that he was doing the cause of religious 
liberty more good by standing at the King's 
elbow and saying a good word for the im- 
prisoned Quakers than he could accomplish in 
any other way. And as the majority of the 
Quakers were in prison, it is evident that Penn 
stood well in the esteem and affections of the 
greater part of his Society. That some of them 
may have censured him, and did not treat him 
kindly or justly, is very probable ; that many of 



^£. 43.] THE SALE OF PARDONS. 20'J 

them did not pay their quit-rents is beyond all 
dispute, on Penn's own testimony ; and that the 
Friends are just as good as other people, and 
some of them much better than some other peo- 
ple, is a well-known fact. If William Penn was 
at all times universally and faultlessly popular 
with all members of his own Society, it is the 
first and only case of the kind on record. There 
was a Judas even among the Twelve. So it was 
no very serious matter that some of the Friends 
did not believe Penn to be a bit of earthly per- 
fection. There are no perfect men in this 
world. There never was but one, and people 
hated him and crucified him. 

The affair of extorting money from the girls 
of Taunton was simply this. When Monmouth 
arrived at Taunton in his revolt against James, 
that town was enthusiastically rebellious, and 
the school-mistress led a procession of her pupils 
to meet him, and presented him a set of royal 
standards. Some of the httle girls in the pro- 
cession were not over ten years old. None the 
less they were rebels, and the sentence of death 
hung over them. It was one of the refined cus- 
toms of the court of James to divide the rebels 
among the King's friends, for transportation or 



208 WILLIAM PENN. [1688. 

ransom, according as the friend wanted colonists 
for his plantations over the sea, or ready money. 
" The Queen begged one hundred for some 
favorite whose name is not preserved," "Sir 
Philip Howard received two hundred," " Sir 
Richard White two hundred, and two other 
knights received one hundred each." So the 
poor wretches were distributed around like 
merchandise, and the friend who received this 
gift of men, women, and children set ransoms 
on their heads, and wrung their freedom or 
money or life away from them. 

While all the others were getting so much 
out of this traffic, the female persons of the 
court — called, by a ghastly sarcasm. Maids of 
Honor — proposed to hypothecate a few par- 
dons themselves. The King gave them these 
Taunton school-girls, and the alleged maids of 
so-called honor began to manipulate their little 
corner. The maids had some trouble in get- 
ting the matter arranged, as all the men to 
whom was offered the mission of managing the 
sale of pardons in the case of these school-girls 
refused to be mixed up in the business, until a 
man named George Penne was found, a profes- 
sional pardon-broker, who officiated in this rob- 



JEt. 43.] TJ/E CASE OF ELDER KIFFIN. 209 

bery. William Penn, on the best evidence, had 
nothing to do with the shameful transaction.* 

As for William Kiffin, he was a Baptist 
preacher, and an old opponent of Penn's. In 
his anxiety to do good that evil might come, 
James was doing all he could to secure the 
adhesion of dissenting subjects, and therefore 
appointed William Kiffin a city magistrate. 
But this most liberal and tolerant monarch had 
just beheaded two of Elder Kiffin's grandsons 
lor expressing their views on religious liberty 
by joining Monmouth's army, and it was feared 
that the old man might not be anxious to accept 
office under the murderer of his boys. A 
grandfather of any sensibility naturally would 
feel a little delicate about it. Kiffin came to 
Penn to ask him that he '' might be excused," 
or else Penn went to Kiffin to advise him not to 
throw over a good thing when he had it, or 
Kiffin and Penn came to each other. Macaulay 
states positively, as he states everything he has 
occasion to say, that Penn was employed by the 
"heartless and venal sycophants of the court" 
to seduce Kiffin into the acceptance of an AI- 

* But only think of the crowd he was associating with, six 
days in the week! 



2IO WILLIAM PENN. [1688. 

derman's gown. Kiffin himself, quoted by the 
defence, says: "A great temptation attended 
me, which was a commission from the King, to 
be one of the Aldermen of the city of London ; 
which, as soon as I heard of it, I used all the 
diligence I could to be excused, both by some 
lords near the King, and also by Sir Nicholas 
Butler and William Penn, but all in vain ; they 
said they knew I had an interest that would 
serve the King, and although they knew that 
my sufferings had been great, by the cutting ofiF 
of my two grandsons and losing their estates, 
yet it should be made up to me, both as to their 
estates and also in what honor or advantage I 
could reasonably desire for myself." * If Elder 
Kiffin knows what he is talking about, it would 
appear to a man up a tree that William Penn 
did advise him to accept office under the King, 
who would pay the old man for his grandsons 
at the ruling rate on 'Change, and on the usual 
terms for grandsons, thirty off for cash. If any 
man can make anything else out of Kiffin's 
statement, which is the only evidence quoted 
by the defence, that man ought to rise up and 

* Janney. 



iEt. 43.] HIS LITTLE WEAKNESSES. 2 1 1 

tell the American people just what William's 
position was in this supremely important mat- 
ter of Elder Kiffin's aldermania. 

The story of Penn's connection with the 
Magdalen College affair has been gone over 
briefly in a foregoing chapter, and Samuel 
Janney's exhaustive researches have been suf- 
ficient to show that the great Quaker had clean 
hands and a right mind in all this matter, and 
said and did nothing derogatory to his charac- 
ter as a man of honor. In generarl, the Macau- 
lay charges fall to the ground in the light of 
fair investigation, and the great essayist himself 
bears wiUing testimony to Penn's "eminent 
virtues," to his "strong sense of religious duty," 
to " his integrity that stood firm against oblo- 
quy and persecution ;" as " a lawgiver who, in 
an age of persecution, made religious liberty 
the corner-stone of a polity." His charge that 
the Quaker's resolution gave way when at- 
tacked " by female blandishments" only excites 
a smile. That he " had no skill in reading the 
characters of others," and that " his confidence 
in persons less virtuous than himself led him 
into great errors and misfortunes," is sadly 
true, as Penn himself learned in some of the bit- 



212 WILLIAM PENN. [1688. 

ter experiences of his old age. That he " en- 
deavored to gain William's assent to the edict 
of James, suspending the penal laws/* is not 
proved. It is known that Penn, much as he 
approved of the widest principles of religious 
liberty embodied in that proclamation, rejoicing 
as he did to see the prison-doors opened by it, 
feared that the arbitrary suspension of the ob- 
noxious enactments was the use of a dangerous 
prerogative, and was ever anxious to have the 
Declaration sanctioned by Parliament. William 
was positively and most certainly a good man, 
but he would dabble in politics. And no man 
ever yet went into politics, though he went in 
not more than knee-deep, who did not come out 
plastered with mud to the nape of his neck. 
The better he is, the more mud is fired at him. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CRUSHED again! 

TT/'ILLIAM PENN did not attend court so 
^^ regularly now as he was used to do. Most 
of his friends at court had gone out of the country, 
and he was almost the only man who had been 
intimately associated with James who did not 
run away. He knew he had done nothing to 
run for. And even if he had, Penn was not the 
man to trust in his legs, and he feared the new 
King no more than he had feared the Tower 
and Newgate in the old days of persecution. 
He would no't Hsten to his friends when they 
urged him to fly to America and look after his 
province. He did not even change his address. 
He remained in London and took his daily 
walks in Whitehall as usual. 

One day in December he received a message 
informing him that the Lords were then sitting, 
and if he would favor them with his attendance, 
they would like to propound a few conundrums 



214 WILLIAM PENN. [1688. 

to him. When a man received a message of 
that nature, he did not send word that he would 
walk around the block and see them later. If 
he couldn't get over to France, he went right 
along with the messenger. Penn went before 
the Lords, and in reply to the numerous ques- 
tions they propounded to him he said that he 
had ever loved his country and Chesapeake 
oysters, and had been devoted to the Protestant 
faith and the colony of Pennsylvania, and had 
always done his best to promote the true inter- 
ests of all these things. The recent King, he 
added, had been his friend and his father's 
friend, and while he no longer owed him alle- 
giance as a subject, owing to circumstances 
over which his recent majesty appeared to have 
very little control, yet as a man he still retained 
for him a great deal more respect than any 
member of that family ever deserved. He had 
done nothing, and should do nothing, but what 
he was willing to answer for before God and 
his country. 

The Lords were puzzled what to do, but as it 
appeared, after a rigid investigation, that Penn 
had done nothing for which he could be held, 
they decided to hold him under bail of ;^6,ooo, 



iEt. 45.] THE KING AND THE CHURCH. 21$ 

and with this pleasant reminder of prosecution 
and more trouble, he was allowed to roam at 
large. His case was continued from term to 
term for about a year, and then when he ap- 
peared in court there were no prosecuting wit- 
nesses and he was discharged. 

The first Parliament in the reign of William 
and Mary passed the Act of Toleration, which 
was hailed with great joy by all denominations 
save the Catholics, who were left out. It did not 
remove the tests, nor did it extend its privileges 
to people who did not believe in the Trinity. 
But none of the penal laws could now be con- 
strued against those dissenters who would take 
the oath of allegiance to the present government, 
and a special clause was inserted for the Qua- 
kers, allowing them to swear or affirm.* The 
act was not as broad in its liberality as Penn 
would have liked to see it, but it was better than 
nothing, and as he had no influence with this 
administration anyhow, he was glad to see his 
friends get what they could out of it. As it 
was, the act was altogether too merciful to 
please the gentle Church of England, and it 



* The Government didn't care a continental which. 



2l6 WILLIAM PENN. [1689. 

therefore opposed it, but the King was too 
heavy for the Church, and the bill went through 
both houses by a large majority, and the law 
could no longer give a man thirty daj^s or ten 
dollars because he wouldn't go to a church 
where he didn't know the facings and couldn't 
find the place, and always knelt down when the 
rest of the people stood up, and roared out 
*' Good Lord deliver us !" at the prayer for the 
King — a response that was eminently appro- 
priate but highly improper. The world was 
slowly coming to its senses. 

In America, matters were still progressing 
miserably in his province. Once more Penn 
reformed the executive department of his gov- 
ernment, and it was so reorganized as to consist 
of a Deputy Governor and two assistants.* 
President Lloyd said he had all the glory and 
twice the trouble he had ever hungered for in 
governing a new province, and he resigned. 
Penn appointed Captain John Blackwell, of 
Boston, in his place. Captain Blackwell was 
not a Quaker, but he was a '' grave, sober, wise 
man," and had been a soldier of the common- 

* Known as "governor" and " t'other governor." 



yEt. 45.] THE DEPUTY GOVERNOR ARRIVES. 21/ 

wealth, and Penn believed in him. The proprie- 
tor's quit-rents continued to be very much due, 
and at this time he writes : '' I have rough peo- 
ple to deal with about my quit-rents, that yet 
cannot pay a ten-pound bill, but draw, draw, 
draw, still upon me. And it being his talent 
(Blackwell's) to regulate and set things in 
method, easy and just, I have pitched upon him 
to advise therein." Blackwell came, saw, and got 
into a row the first thing. The Friends disliked 
him because he was a military man, and perhaps 
he stirred up the people about their quit-rents, 
which was always a tender subject with them. 
Dissensions still existed in the Assembly, and it 
was difficult for the Deputy Governor to get a 
quorum of the Council together. Of course. 
Council, Assembly, and Deputy Governor 
poured their complaints in upon Penn, who 
finally advised Blackwell to resign, " although," 
the Governor writes, " I must say that his pee- 
vishness to some Friends has not risen out of the 
dust without occasion." The government then 
reverted to the Council, with Thomas Lloyd 
president, the original form of 1683. 

During this year, also, Clarkson says, Penn 
wrote to Lloyd, instructing him to set up a pub- 



2l8 WILLIAM PENN. [16S9. 

lie grammar-school in Philadelphia, which he 
would incorporate, by charter, at some future 
time. This, says Janney, ''gave rise to the 
Friends' Public School, Avhich was incorporated 
in 1697, confirmed by a fresh patent in 1701, 
and by another charter in 1708, whereb}^ the 
corporation was forever thereafter to consist of 
fifteen discreet and religious persons of the peo- 
ple called Quakers, by name of ' The Overseers 
of the Pubhc School, founded in Philadelphia, 
at the request, cost, and charges of the people 
called Quakers.' But its last and present char- 
ter from William Penn, confirming the other 
charters and enlarging its privileges, is dated 
29th of November, 171 1, by which the election 
of the overseers is vested in the corporation. In 
this excellent institution, the poor were taught 
gratuitously, others paid a proportion of the 
expense incurred in their children's education, 
and it was open on the same terms to all reli- 
gious persuasions." 

In the year preceding the estabhshment of the 
public grammar-school, the first protest against 
human slavery in America had been bravely 
spoken. At a monthly meeting of the German 
Friends at Germantown, in April, 1688, the 



JEt. 45.] F/J^ST PROTEST AGAINST SLA VERY. 219 

members of the Society present gave their tes- 
timony against the evil that was one day to 
overshadow the land with clouds of war and 
drench the republic with blood. This protest 
against slavery was signed by Garret Hen- 
derich, Derich Op de Graeff, Francis Daniel 
Pastorius, and Abram Op de Graeff. 

In 1690, the first American paper-mill was 
established near Germantown, on the Wissa- 
hickon, by William Bradford and William Rit- 
tenhouse. At this mill the paper was made on 
which the Weekly Mercury was printed in New 
York. 

But while his province was prospering in its 
material development, it needed the presence of 
the Governor, and Penn was anxious to return 
to it. The persecutions of the dissenters had 
ceased ; he could do no more for his Society; he 
had remained in the country after the accession 
of William and Mary long enough to get arrest- 
ed and dismissed, and had shown people that 
he had no fear and did not shrink from the con- 
sequences of any of his acts, and he wanted to 
come back to Pennsylvania and stir up the peas- 
antry about those quit-rents. But there were 
several reasons for his remaining in England. 



220 WILLIAM PENN, [1690. 

One day, just before King- William went to 
Ireland for the purpose of fighting a battle, — 
the anniversary of which would forever be 
celebrated several days out of date, and would 
every year be the cause of as many broken 
heads as there may be Orangemen in New York, 
— a file of soldiers arrested Penn and took him 
before the Lords of Council, on a charge of 
holding treasonable correspondence with King 
James. Penn did not like the make-up of the 
Council, for among them, now the bitterest per- 
secutors of the Catholic King, were the men 
who had fawned on him with most servile sub- 
mission when he was on the throne. He de- 
manded an examination before the King in 
person, and accordingly Friend William and 
King WiUiam faced each other, and the Quaker 
was informed that his clandestine correspon- 
dence with King James was known. He was 
glad to hear of this, because he did not know 
anything about it himself, and would like very 
much to hear what there was in it. They told 
him he had better save his sarcasm for the 
Indians, and then showed him a letter from 
James to himself which had been intercepted. 
It was a square deal, no doubt of that; the letter 



JEt. 45.] P£^^^ REMAINS IN ENGLAND. 221 

was genuine and addressed to Penn. Evidently 
somebody had access to his lock-box, and Penn 
said there would be a vacancy in the London 
Post Office if he had any influence with Frank 
Hatton. In this letter, the exiled King desired 
Penn " to come to his assistance and express to 
him the resentments ^ of his favor and benevo- 
lence." 

They asked Penn why James Stuart wrote to 
him. Penn couldn't say. The Stuarts usually 
wrote to his family for money, and he had no 
doubt that was really what James wanted now. 
He couldn't get it, if that was it. Penn had no 
money to spare, in the first place, and if he 
should send his friend a draft, some of the 
rascally carriers under this administration 
would steal it. Penn made this last remark in 
a loud, defiant voice.f Then the Council want- 
ed to know what " resentments" did he mean. 
Under what obligations of gratitude was Penn 
to James? This must have puzzled Penn when 
he thought it over. What did he owe to the 
Stuarts? He and his father before him had 
served them faithfully and zealously, and 
Charles and James had used them so long as 

* " Resentments of " — gratitude for. f In his mind. 



222 WILLIAM PENN. [1690. 

they were useful, and had paid their debts in 
acres of wild land and tribes of wilder Indians. 
Finally he answered that he supposed James 
wanted him to assist in bringing about his res- 
toration, and while Penn still protested his 
friendship for the exile, and declared that as a 
private person he was willing to render him any 
service in his power, yet as a citizen of England 
he owed him no obedience, and had never 
thought of aiding him to regain the throne. 

At the conclusion of this examination, Penn 
was bound over to appear in court at the Trinity 
term, and when he appeared he was again dis- 
charged. William the Quaker was a far better 
man than was William the Admiral under a 
similar state of things, and James thought very 
meanly of Penn when he believed him capable 
of plotting treason against the Government. 
What had this narrow-minded man ever seen 
in Penn to justify him in such a base estimate 
of his character ? * 

James landed in Ireland, and King William 
went to meet him in that famous foot-race 
known as the Battle of the Boyne, in which 

* Answer in next number. A chromo will be given for the 
first correct solution. 



JEt. 45.] ACQUITTED ONCE MORE. 223 

contest of speed James came out a little ahead, 
although William was close behind him. In 
London Penn was again in danger of arrest. 
Lord Preston, Master Ashton, and a man named 
Elliott had been arrested on the eve of their 
departure for France, and papers of a treason- 
able nature were found on their persons, which 
implicated a number of people of note. A pro- 
clamation was issued for the arrest of the Bishop 
of Ely, Lord Clarendon, and William Penn, 
among others. Penn was not then arrested, 
although he wrote to the Secretary of State, 
asking when he would be wanted and express- 
ing his readiness to come in at any time. Going 
to prison every few days seemed like old times 
for him, and it is a mystery how he kept him- 
self from writing a few pamphlets. There was 
no evidence against him in this case, nothing in 
the intercepted papers to implicate him, but so 
long as he was in the country it seemed to be 
the opinion of Mary, who was running the 
mangle during her husband's absence, that he 
might as well be in prison. So he went to his 
dungeon-cell,* and on the last day of Michael- 

* Same old sell ; up three pair back, and knock at the right- 
hand door. Knock hard. 



224 WILLIAM PENN. [1690. 

mas term — whenever that is or was — he was 
brought into court, acquitted, and discharged 
as usual. 

On the 13th of January George Fox died, and 
William Penn stood beside him as he " finished 
his glorious testimony." " He is gone," said 
Penn, " and has left us in the storm that is over 
our heads, surely in great mercy to him, but as 
an evidence to us of sorrow to come." Penn 
officiated at the funeral, and even in the depth 
of his sorrow his own troubles pursued him. 
No grief was sacred and no grave secure in the 
good old days. 

A body of officers hurried to the grave of 
George Fox to arrest Penn on a new charge, 
but they reached the spot too late ; the Quaker 
had returned to his home. Here he learned 
that WiUiam Fuller, a gentleman who supported 
himself in easy affluence by swearing to any- 
thing he could be paid for, had, under oath, 
accused him of being engaged in treasonable 
correspondence with the enemies of the Govern- 
ment. This same detective, also swore out an- 
other accusation against him in Dublin, being 
determined to earn his money and maintain his 
character as a detective, if he had to accuse 



^t. 46.] LIVING IN SECLUSION. 225 

Penn all over Europe. It is some consolation 
to know that within a few months the House of 
Commons took up this man Fuller and resolved 
that he was " a notorious cheat, rogue, and false 
accuser, who had scandalized the Government 
and magistrates and abused the House." And 
within ten years he was convicted as a Hbeller, 
condemned to stand three times in the pillory, 
fined i,ooo marks, and sent to prison. 

In the face of these accusations and warrants, 
Penn once more postponed his return to Penn- 
sylvania, and for a few months lived very quietly. 
He had no idea of going into court to stand the 
farce of a trial with professional perjurers as 
witnesses for the prosecution, and the fact that 
he made no effort to purchase Fuller indicates 
that detectives were more expensive then than 
now, or else the Government could outbid him 
on witnesses. If Penn could only have col- 
lected his quit-rents, he might have bought all 
the witnesses he needed. As it was, he simply 
kept himself in a general state of umbrageous 
seclusion, and was not at home to any gentle- 
man wearing a star on his coat. But it is proba- 
ble that he would have been found had the 
Government wanted him very much or really 



226 WILLIAM PENN. [1690. 

believed him to be guilty. He wrote letters 
from his retirement — nothing could keep him 
from writing letters. He pledged himself to 
the King for " inoffensive behavior" of himself, 
and spelled behavior with a " u" to make it more 
binding ; and begging for either peace or fair 
treatment, he added, *' If I am not worth looking 
after, let me be quiet ; and if I am of any impor- 
tance, I am worth obliging.'* " Let me go to 
America, or let me be protected here." 

Penn was more than ever anxious to return 
to America, and he must have half wished he 
had never exchanged Philadelphia for London. 
The officers of the law were after him with two 
warrants, his enemies were reiterating the old 
charges of Jesuitism, everything King James 
had done that was unpopular — and all his acts 
were unpopular since the new King came in — 
was charged upon William Penn ; even many 
of the dissenters joined in the clamor against 
him, members of his own Society treated him 
coldly, and the day of his influence at court had 
passed away. But yesterday, and at Penn's 
house in Kensington, crowds of clients, friends, 
and suitors waited on him, begging for his favor 
with the King ; petitions, remonstrances, and 



Mi. 46.] THE QUID OF BITTER MEMORIES. 22/ 

addresses were entrusted to the courtly Quaker's 
influence and keeping, with most obsequious 
reverence and courtesy ; no man so favored 
and so courted, and to-day, hiding in a back 
room up a rickety flight of stairs, with a camp 
bedstead, a tin wash-basin, and two hooks in the 
wall for furniture, and one window with a view 
of a back alley and a Chinese laundry. How 
vain are the smiles of princes, and how lighter 
than vanity it is to put one's trust in king*.* 
How often, in his retirement, must poor Penn 
have thought of the impressive remarks of Rev. 
Alonzo C. Wolsey, the well-known revivalist: 

"... Oh, Cromwell, John H. CromwelH 
Had I but attended to my own knitting, 
And worked as hard for my own province, 
With half the zeal and about one third of the money, 
As I have served this go-as-you-please-so-you-get-out-of-the- 

country King, 
I had not then been left by any man." 

In these days of trial and affliction came one 
grateful friend, Locke, and offered to procure a 
pardon for him, for it was now Locke's day of 



* Three tiny little deuces will take the rigidity out of the two 
biggest Kings that ever glared upon the glittering boards. 



228 WILLIAM PENN. [1691. 

grace. But as Locke had conscientiously re- 
fused a pardon, obtained for him by Penn, 
because he knew he had done no wrong, as 
George Fox had refused pardons because only 
guilty men could be pardoned, so now William 
Penn would have none. He asked for justice, 
not mercy, and he refused to go to America as 
an exile. 

Affairs were growing more and more compli- 
cated in Pennsylvania. The inhabitants of the 
territory showed a desire to secede from the 
province, and the members of Council from the 
territories insisted on separate civil establish- 
ments, and, ignoring the honorable members 
from the province, proceeded to appoint their 
own judges, and issued their commissions. 
Penn, willing to conciliate the territories, wrote 
to the Council, submitting for the people's choice 
three forms of executive, a Council, or five 
Commissioners, or a Deputy Governor. The 
people of the province promptly decided on a 
Deputy Governor, and the territories, being in 
a large minority, could not help themselves, 
although they wanted the five Commissioners, 
and wanted the Deputy Governor least and last 
of any. But the province, for the sake of peace, 



^t. 47.] GOVERNORS ALL ROUND. 229 

made them a fair offer : 'Til take the turkey and 
^\NQ you the buzzard, or you take the buzzard 
and give me the turkey." And so the province 
took the Deputy Governor, and named Thomas 
Lloyd for the place, while the three lower 
counties would none of him, and scoffed at him 
and would not make obeisance before him, but 
said " Ha, ha," and called him '' Tom" and 
'' Gov." 

Penn was displeased with Ltoyd for accept- 
ing " a broken office," and he justly blamed the 
territory men for their ingratitude. But scold- 
ing wouldn't help matters, so he did the best 
he could. He confirmed Thomas Lloyd as 
Deputy Governor for the province, and sent 
out Colonel Markham as Deputy Governor for 
the territories. This firm action on the part of 
Penn was immediately felt. The two sections 
had now each its own deputy governor to sup- 
port, and fearing that Penn might send out a 
Lieutenant-Governor and possibly a Governor- 
at-Large, they subsided into tranquil and trem- 
bling submission. Their pacification and sup- 
pression was complete when there came a 
rumor from England, that if there was any 
more trouble, Penn had threatened to send out 



230 WILLIAM PEN A. [i^^ji. 

a real governor's private secretary, appointed 
from the ranks of our best young men. This 
dreadful threat, coming from one usually so 
kind and merciful, cast a gloom over the entire 
community. Penn was sorely distressed about 
the near future of his province, for he saw 
whither it was drifting.* " Lay their union 
upon them," he wrote, " for else the Governor 
of New York is like to have all, if he have it 
not already." 

George Keith, feeling that nobody would 
know who he was nor what he was doing if he 
didn't talk loud and call upon the editor every 
time he came to town, now added his little fire- 
brand to the general distraction. It was not 
well, he thought, to have all the unrest and ex- 
citement and hullaballoo confined to politics. 
The mixture needed a little tincture of religion 
to make it bitter. George was a Scotch Qua- 
ker, a minister of the Society, a fine scholar, 
with a profound respect for George Keith and 
the "' docthrines" with a long o. He had been 
a stanch and able Quaker, but he would rather 
wrangle over some rugged tough old theo- 

* Having probably heard Miss Anna Dickinson's admirable 
lecture on that subject. 



^t. 47.] DISGUSTS HIS AUDIENCE. 23 1 

logical knot than eat. He now started to re- 
form the Society. Some of its doctrines he 
ridiculed, some he denounced ; he abused the 
Friends for taking any part in politics or as- 
sisting in the execution of the laws, set up a 
separate meeting, drew large numbers of 
Friends after him, went to England and was 
ordained a clergyman of the Church of England 
by the Bishop of London, and returned to the 
province in orders, a clergyman of the most 
political church then known. His Quaker 
followers looked at him in amazement. They 
had tasted the Christian love and fellowship of 
that church in nearly all the prisons in England, 
and had quivered under the pitiless lash of its 
persecution until a dreadful Catholic prince 
stayed its arm, and they didn't care for any 
more Episcopalian on their dish. No wonder 
that many of Keith's followers left him, and the 
wonder is that any should remain with a man 
who placed himself in the exceedingly pleasant 
position of denouncing, for one half his life, 
what he had spent the other half in defending. 

All this religious and civil distraction and 
dissension in the province gave the King the 
pretext he needed, and Penn's worst fears 



232 WILLIAM PENN. [1691. 

were realized. During the war with France, it 
was necessary that the King- should have a firm 
and controlling hold upon all the colonies. 
Many charters were annulled on various pre- 
texts, and on the loth of March an order in 
council was promulgated, which deprived Wil- 
liam Penn of his government, and placed the 
province oi Pennsylvania under the jurisdiction 
of Benjamin Fletcher, Governor of New York. 
Penn's downfall must have moved even the 
pity of his enemies. He claimed that he was 
almost impoverished by his expenditures for 
his model province ; his Irish estates had been 
wrung from him in very much the same way 
they had been wrung from some one else for 
his father; swindled by his own stewards, over 
head and ears in debt, neglected or persecuted 
where he had been courted, under the sus- 
picion and frowns of royalty where he had 
basked in the smiles of the court, deprived ol 
his governorship, and forced to see the fate of 
the " Holy Experiment" in the hands of a rough 
soldier, arrest hanging over him and the prison 
yawning before him, his loving wife heart- 
broken over her husband's troubles and re- 
verses, care and sorrow hemmed him in on 



JEt. 47.] JIA/^D TIMES FOR THE FOUNDER, 233 

every side. But he was patient and content to 
abide the just judgments of time. '' I know my 
enemies," he writes, " and their true characters 
and history, and their intrinsic value to this or 
other governments. I commit them to time, 
with my own conduct and afflictions." 

It is a world of change. The radiant sunrise 
and the cloudless skies this morning ; the 
tossing clouds and the pitiless storms to-night. 
To-day, we stand in voiceless admiration before 
the glowing bill-boards of Barnum the magnifi- 
cent ; to-morrow, the circus is gone and the all- 
devouring goat of the upper wards browses 
pensively upon the gorgeous tropical scenery, 
the writhing boa, the fierce Numidian lion, the 
Kentucky giant, and the fat woman. Sic tran- 
sit gloria cir^^ccus ! 



CHAPTER XIV. 

NUGGETS OF SOLID WISDOM. 

"TVURING these long months of perplexities, 
^ troubles, and retirement, Penn kept him- 
self so closely connected with the ink-well that 
one of his worldly friends, an idle man given to 
vain babbling and profane conversation, advised 
him to go into the publishing business under 
the firm name of " Penn and Ink.'* To which 
the stately Quaker gravely replied in a letter, 
saying that he wot not that he had none of his 
acquaintance of such a name as Ink, nor were 
it at all seemly that he should enter upon busi- 
ness covenants (though he must needs say it) 
with a person whom (although in all civility 
and none unkindness) yet not to have known 
more of his merits and conversation (being, as 
it were, well spoken and favored) and so it be- 
hooveth him. Then the profane babbler who 
made the idle and wicked jest felt that W. Penn 
had " sot down onto him." 



iEt. 48.] WOMEN'S RIGHTS. 235 

He was a busy man and must have been a 
standing terror to publishers. He wrote, during- 
the three years he was hunted and persecuted 
after James went out of the royalty business, 
his preface to Robert Barclay's works, a tract 
called "Just Measures," which was a sort of 
pioneer " women's rights " document. In the 
Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meetings of the 
Friends, womea as well as that noble animal, 
the man, were allowed to take part, not merely 
in the ministry and subscriptions, but in the 
government of the church as well. In all relig- 
ious denominations there has always been and 
ever will be a class of men, usually the stupid- 
est and stingiest in the church, who consider 
a woman utterly incapable of comprehending, 
much less transacting, the simplest items of 
church business, which should be left entirely 
to the brethren, while the sisters should confine 
their humble duties as church members to the 
narrow but proper sphere of their limited abili- 
ties,and be content merely with collecting money, 
organizing and maintaining sociables, mite soci- 
eties, fairs, missionary circles, relieving the 
poor, raising funds for the church carpet and a 
new organ, paying the sexton, clearing off the 



236 WILLIAM PENN [1692. 

church debt, buying coal, and managing the 
summer picnic and the winter Christmas-tree, 
paying for the parsonage, making baptismal 
robes, washing dishes and making oyster-soup 
at the festival, organizing the lecture-course, 
paying the gas-bills, keeping up the prayer- 
meetings, attending all the funerals, buying 
Sunday-school libraries, not be bothering the 
men for money all the time, and keep quiet in 
business meetings when the men are voting to 
apply the funds now in the hands of the ** Wo- 
men's Home Mission" to the purchase of a desk 
and office chair for the church clerk. As there 
are men of this class in all churches to-day, so 
there were such men among the Friends then, 
and William Penn, with his usual good sense, 
maintained '* So that as men and women make 
up the church, men and women make up the 
business of the church." 

He also published ''A Key Opening the 
Way to every Capacity how to Distinguish the 
Religion professed by the people called Qua- 
kers from the Perversions and Misrepresenta- 
tions of their Adversaries ; " and " An Essay 
toward the Present and Future Peace of Eu- 
rope," which was a peace-society paper, and 



JEl 4^.] PENN'S PATENT PRECEPTS. 237 

was a forerunner of the views and plans of the 
Universal International Lamb-and-Lion Society 
of to-day. He also pubhshed at this time '' Some 
Fruits of Solitude in Reflexions and Maxims re- 
lating to the Conduct of Human Life." These 
maxims, as maxims are very apt to be, are 
plumb full of wisdom and quite generally neg- 
lected, it being so much easier to write them 
than to keep them. Penn's maxims wander 
over a wide range of subjects, and if he remem- 
bered them all himself, to do them, it is no 
wonder he was a good man. The following 
samples, extracted here and there from the mass 
of his wise sayings, will not burden the memory 
of the careful reader who skips this chapter, and 
for whose special edification they are here in- 
serted : 

Cunning borders very near upon knavery. 

In his prayers man says, *' Thy will be done ;** 
but means his own ; at least acts so. 

Lend not beyond thy ability, nor refuse to 
lend out of thy ability ; especially when it will 
help others more than it can hurt thee. 

If thou rise with an appetite, thou art sure 
never to sit down without one. 

Strong liquors are good at some times, and in 



238 WILLIAM PENN. [1692. 

small proportions : being better for physic than 
food ; for cordials than common use.* 

Frugality is good, if liberality be joined with 
it. The first is leaving off superfluous expenses ; 
the last bestowing them to the benefit of others 
that need. The first without the last begins 
covetousness ; the last without the first begins 
prodigality. 

Never marry but for love ; but see that thou 
lovest what is lovely. 

Frequent visits, presents, intimate correspon- 
dence, and intermarriages t within allowed 
bounds, are means of keeping up the concern 
and affection that nature requires from relations. 

There can be no friendship where there is no 
freedom. It will speak freely, and act so too ; 
and take nothing ill where no ill is meant. 

Avoid company, where it is not profitable or 
necessary ; and on these occasions, speak little, 
and last. 

Give no advantage in argument, nor lose any 
that is offered. This is a benefit which arises 
from temper. 

* "For mechanical purposes, a little of it goes good." — Josh 
Billings. 
f He believed in keeping the property in the family. 



^t. 48.] PENN'S PATENT PRECEPTS. 239 

If thou thinkest twice before thou speakest 
once, thou wilt speak twice the better for it. 

It is wise not to seek a secret ; and honest not 
to reveal one. 

Only trust thyself, and another shall not be- 
tray thee. 

Openness has the mischief, though not the 
malice of treachery. 

Some are so foolish as to interrupt and an- 
ticipate those that speak, instead of hearing 
and thinking before they answer ; which is un- 
civil, as well as silly. 

Wisdom never uses nor wants cunning. Cun- 
ning to the wise is as an ape to a man. 

Be not easily acquainted ; lest, finding reason 
to cool, thou makest an enemy instead of a good 
neighbor. 

It were endless to dispute upon everything 
that's disputable. 

We must not pretend to see all that we see, if 
we would be easy. 

Rarely promise ; but, if lawful, constantly per- 
form. 

If thou wouldst be obeyed being a father, 
being a son, be obedient. 



240 WILLIAM PENN. [1692. 

Be not fancifully jealous, for that is foolish ; 
as to be reasonably so is wise. 

It is no sin to be tempted, but to be over- 
come. 

If we would amend the world, we should 
mend ourselves ; and teach our children to be, 
not what we are, but what they should be. 

It is not how we leave our children, but what 
we leave them.*^ 

Ingenuity, as well as religion, sometimes 
suffers between two thieves : pretenders and 
despisers. 

*' Have but little to do, and do it thyself." f 

To shoot well flying is well ; but to choose 
it has more of vanity than judgment. 

To be dexterous in danger is a virtue ; but 
to court danger, to show it, is weakness. 

A man, like a watch, is to be valued for his 
goings. X 

Never give out while there is hope ; but hope 
not beyond reason ; for that shows more desire 
than judgment. 

* This may sound worldly, but we reckon it's all right. , 

f He wrote this while he was staying in London and letting 

other men govern Pennsylvania for him. 

X That is, his value is in his works, not his face. Hence it 

is only a cheap man who " runs his face" for anything. 



yEt. 49-] PENN'S PATENT PRECErrS. 24 1 

We must take care to do things rightly ; for 
a just sentence may be unjustly executed. 

I have oftentimes thought that a passionate 
man is like a weak spring that cannot stand 
long locked. 

And it is as true that those things are unfit 
for use that cannot bear small locks without 
breaking. 

Remember the proverb, '* Bene qui latuit, 
bene vixit:" They are happy that live retired- 
ly.* 

Affect not to be seen, and men will less see 
thy weakness. 

Happy that king who is great by justice, and 
the people who are free by obedience. 

Let all the people think they govern, and 
they will be governed. 

Kings, chiefly in this, should imitate God; 
their mercy should be above all their works. 

Where a subject is more popular than the 
prince, the prince is in danger. 

We are apt to love praise, but not to deserve 
it. 

It is safer to learn than to teach ; and he who 

* This one he wrote while he was living in the court of James. 



242 WILLIAM PENN. [1693. 

conceals his opinion has nothing to answer for. 

It were better to be of no church, than to be 
bitter for any. 

God is better served in resisting a temptation 
to evil than in many formal prayers. 

This is but twice or thrice a day ; but that 
every hour and moment of the day. So much 
more is our continual watch than our evening 
and morning devotion. 

Running streams are not so apt to corrupt 
as stagnant waters: nor itinerant, as settled 
preachers; but they are not to run before 
they are sent. 

If I am even with my enemy, the debt is 
paid ; but if I forgive it, I oblige him for ever. 

" Open thou my lips, and then," said the royal 
prophet, '' my mouth shall praise God." But 
not till then. 

When Penn drops into politics and touches 
upon civil-service reform, he speaks truths that 
are new and strange to the statesmen who, by 
going without a girl in the kitchen and having 
their washing done at home, manage to save 
$45,000 a year out of a $5,000 salary. Penn 
was evidently no admirer of the noble scratcher 



iEt. 49-] CIVIL SERVICE IDEAS, 243 

or independent, for in speaking- of party one of 
his maxims is, ^' Where right or rehgion gives 
a call, a neuter must be a coward or a hypo- 
crite." 

Among his maxims under this and similar 
heads are : 

The safety of a prince, therefore, consists in 
a well-chosen council ; and that only can be 
said to be so where the persons that compose 
it are qualified for the business that comes be- 
fore them. 

Who would send to a tailor to make a lock, 
or to a smith to make a suit of clothes ? 

Let there be merchants for trade, seamen for 
the admiralty, travellers for foreign affairs, 
some of the leading men of the country for 
home business, and common and civil lawyers 
to advise of legality and right, who should al- 
ways keep to the strict rules of law. 

Yet the public must and will be served ; and 
they that do it well deserve public marks of 
honor and profit. 

To do so, men must have public minds, as 
well as salaries ; or they will serve private ends 
at public cost. 

Government can never be well administered 



244 WILLIAM PENN. [1693. 

but where those entrusted make conscience of 
well discharging- their places. 

Five things are requisite to a good officer : 
ability, clean hands, despatch, patience, and im- 
partiality. 

Let men have sufficient salaries, and exceed 
them at their peril. 

It is a dishonor to government that its offi- 
cers should live on benevolence ; as it ought to 
be infamous for officers to dishonor the pubhc, 
by being twice paid for the same business. 

He that understands not his employment, 
whatever else he knows, must be unfit for it ; 
and the public suffer by his inexpertness. 

They that are able should be just too ; or the 
government may be the worst for their capa- 
city. 

While Penn was employing his abundant 
leisure in writing all these wise things and 
good books, his friends at court, remembering 
his unselfishness and kindness in the day of his 
own court influence, procured him what he 
most earnestly desired, a public hearing before 
the King, the result of which was that Penn's 
defence of himself was so able, simple, and con- 



yEt. 49.] DBA TH OF GUL PENN. 245 

vincing that even the King", who knew all the 
time he was innocent, told him " he was as free 
as ever," and should " not be molested or in- 
jured in any of his affairs." This was exceed- 
ingly kind in the King. He had already seized 
Penn's estates in Ireland, and had taken away 
his province, and now that Penn had nothing 
left that his most gracious Majesty could get 
hold of, he assured him of the royal protection 
and confidence. '' If I have done anything you 
are sorry for," said this magnanimous King, '' I 
forgive you." 

Once more Penn was a free man, but his cup oi 
bitterness was not yet full. His wife, Gulielma, 
whose health had long been failing, broken by 
sorrow for her husband's troubles, lived to see his 
name honorary cleared from every accusation, 
and then, on February 23, 1693, in the fiftieth 
year of her age, passed away " to the world that 
sets this one right." ** In great peace and sweet- 
ness she departed," Penn writes, "and to her 
gain, but our incomparable loss, being one of 
ten thousand, wise, chaste, humble, plain, mod- 
est, industrious, constant, and undaunted." " She 
quietly expired in my arms, her head upon my 
bosom, with a sensible and devout resignation 



246 WILLIAM PENN. [1693. 

of her soul to Almighty God. I hope I may 
say she was a public as well as a private loss ; 
for she was not only an excellent wife and 
mother, but an entire and constant friend, of a 
more than common capacity, and greater mod- 
esty and humihty; yet most equal, and un- 
daunted in danger ; religious, as well as ingenu- 
ous, without affectation ; an easy mistress and 
good neighbor, especially to the poor ; neither 
lavish nor penurious ; but an example of indus- 
try as well as of other virtues." 

The beautiful character of Gulielma Penn, 
drawn by her husband and attested by her life 
and the testimony of the friends who enjoyed 
her society, draws us very near to the great 
Quaker in this crowning affliction, which fell 
upon him at the very time when his troubles 
were so many and his friends seemed so few. 
After Guli's death his heart was heavy and his 
pen was idle, until he was roused and called back 
to the pitiless workaday world and its active 
duties by startling news from Pennsylvania. 

When that province was annexed to New 
York, Governor Fletcher went down to Phila- 
delphia and summoned the Assembly to meet 
him. He paid no attention to the old legal 



iEt. 49-] FLETCHER SHAKES THEM UP, 247 

form in calling them together, probably desir- 
ing to let them know there was no funny busi- 
ness about him, and they didn't have patient 
William Penn to fool with when he was around. 
He put on airs and talked about Brooklyn bridge 
and the L roads and going back to the " city," 
in a way that was exasperating to the Philadel- 
phians, and affected to be afraid of wolves when 
he crossed Broad Street, and looked amazed and 
got out and walked when a Market Street car 
conductor tried to collect six cents fare of him, 
and found fault with Fairmount Park because it 
was so small, and talked so incessantly about 
what they did and the way they did it in *' New 
Yawk," that the Assembly grew tired of him 
before it assembled, and the greater number of 
the members refused to take the oaths tendered 
to them. Fletcher then watered the oaths down 
to the mild consistency approved by their politi- 
cal palates, but assured them at the same time 
that he only did it because this was the first 
time and didn't count. After this, he said, they 
should take the oath straight, if it burned their 
throats raw. 

Then he proceeded to the business upon the 
Speaker's table, and laid before them a requisition 



248 WILLIAM PENN. [1693. 

from Queen Mary for men and money to defend 
the frontiers of New York against the French 
and Indians. Albany was exposed to attack, and 
there were all the precious Knickerbocker fami- 
lies, seven hundred years older than the Flood, 
exposed to the murderous attacks of barbarous 
Indians, who would lift the hair of a genuine 
Knickerbocker even as the daughter of an Irish 
king chips the edges of your china. And if 
these families were utterly destroyed from off 
the face of the earth at that time, what was 
New York going to do in coming years for de- 
scendants of the placid marble bakers, who 
would rather be killed sitting down comfort- 
ably than make the exertion necessary either 
for fighting or running away ? Somebody must 
protect these precious old duffers, and the Penn- 
sylvanians were called upon and ordered to see 
that the Knickerbockers received no hurt. 

The Quakers, in reply to this, intimated that 
if Governor Fletcher was spoiling for a fight, 
they had one right there, with which they 
could accommodate him, and before they took 
New York under their protecting wings they 
would defend Pennsylvania from his arbitrary 
and unjust encroachments. They insisted very 



^t. 49.] NOT ANY WAR SUPPLY. 24g 

humbly, but very obstinately, that he should 
confirm all the laws now in force in the province 
of Pennsylvania, reminding him that while they 
acknowledged him as their lawful Governor, 
and admitted that his administration superseded 
William Penn's, yet it was to be run on the old 
William Penn basis and principles ; and they 
earnestly besought the new Governor not to for- 
get it. Having thus declared their rights and 
manfully asserted their privileges, they passed, 
among other bills, an act imposing a tax of a 
penny a pound on the clear value of real and 
personal estate, and a poll-tax of six shillings a 
head, which they presented the Crown, with a 
request that one half thereof be allowed to the 
Governor, — which was more than the ungrate- 
ful legislators Ijad ever done for William Penn. 
They made no grant of men or money for the 
defence of New York, for which wilful neglect 
Fletcher urged the King to form New York, the 
Jerseys, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut into one 
province, when the Quakers could be outvoted 
and compelled to furnish their quota of troops 
and money for a vigorous prosecution of the 
war. "In London," says Dixon, "the displeas- 
ure of William fell on the absent Governor, and 



2$0 WILLIAM PENN. [1693. 

the Privy Council even ordered the Attorney- 
General vigorously to inspect his patent, and 
see if some legal flaw could not be found in it 
which would furnish a pretext for its with- 
drawal altogether." 

Once again Governor Fletcher made a requi- 
sition on Penns3dvania for money and troops for 
the defence of New York, and once more he did 
not get any. He modified his request this time, 
asking the non-combatants to clothe and feed 
the Indians, and thus secure their friendship 
for the colonies. 

This was one hundred and eighty-eight years 
ago, but it seems that even at that day the 
North American Indians were unable, or un- 
willing, to clothe and feed themselves, and lived 
on the bounty of the Government just as they 
do even unto this day. They had in that far- 
away time the same excellent and carefully cul- 
tivated voice for blankets and guns and beef and 
bread and rum. And they would starve before 
they would work for a line of it. They were 
then, as to-day, paupers. When Penn is writing 
from Pennsylvania about kiUing wild turkeys 
and pigeons with sticks, and Richard Townsend 
drops his scythe to chase the wild deer out of 



iEt. 49-] BEGGING FOR WAR SUPPLIES. 2jl 

his meadow, the Indians had to be clothed and 
fed to keep them from starvation and the war- 
path, and they would fight for the side that fed 
them the most. An Indian, after all, is more 
like an Indian than anything- else. 

The Assembly responded promptly. Had 
WiUiam Penn, who loved his model state as he 
loved his children, who had ever been indulgent 
and patient and liberal, and who in the days of 
his opulence supported the provincial court out 
of his own pocket, — had this man asked them 
for supplies, the Assembly would have paid no 
attention to his request. But when Governor 
Fletcher stood up and scowled and talked bass, 
and growled, and told them what he wanted and 
that he was going to have it, or — 

The Assembly voted the same tax as before so 
quickly the Governor didn't have time to finish 
his threat, and the supply thus voted amounted 
to £760. None the less the Assembly stipulated 
that Thomas Lloyd and William Markham, 
Deputy Governors, should have ;^2oo of this. 
Fletcher rejected this bill, and, the Pennsylvan- 
ians still manfully asserting that they had a 
right to dispose of the money they appropriated, 
the Assembly was dissolved, and no way had 



252 WILLIAM PENN. [1694. 

yet been discovered of making the Quakers take 
part in the French war. True to their princi- 
ples, they would neither fish nor cut bait. 

Just what the ancient Pennsylvanians thought 
of themselves at this time nobody knows, for 
they never told, and if they had said anything, 
honest shame would have impelled them to lie 
about it, rather than give posterity an honest 
judgment on themselves. In two years they 
had voted, with marvellous promptness, a sup- 
ply of ;^i,5oo to a soldier, a rough, rude man, a 
stranger careless of their rights or consciences, 
and WiUiam Penn, founder of their state, their 
benefactor and protector, was at this moment 
in England, begging his own colonists to lend 
him enough money to bring his family to Amer- 
ica. And they wouldn't let him have it on any 
terms. 

That is the manner of people our glorious old 
ancestors were. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE LAY OF THE QUIT-RENTS. 

STUNG by the ingratitude of the colonists 
for whom he had sacrificed his fortune, 
but still hoping that he might yet be able to 
work out to a bright fruition all his cherished 
hopes for his " model state," Penn set to work 
to get Pennsylvania back into his own hands. 
He sent the Queen a petition, begging an inves- 
tigation of all matters referring to the alleged 
misconduct of his province, which was granted 
him, and resulted in his reinstatement as Gov- 
ernor of Pennsylvania. He was Governor once 
more, but he couldn't get out to his province. 
He had about quit asking for his '' quit-rents." 
He had been singing on that key for ten years, 
and didn't seem to touch the popular chord. 
Now he tried to borrow ;^ 10,000 of one hun- 
dred of his most prosperous settlers, Dixon 
says, offering these blessed quit-rents as se- 
curity. But the one hundred prosperous set- 



254 WILLIAM PENN, [1G94. 

tiers wouldn't have it. Failing in this little 
negotiation, he resolved to govern his province 
in London, rather than accept a steerage ticket 
from the Emigration Society or work his way 
over.'^ He appointed William Markham his 
Lieutenant-Governor ; Thomas Lloyd, his for- 
mer deputy and one of his intimate friends, was 
dead. The Five Nations of Indians, weary of 
Pennsylvania cookery and supplieSjf had weak- 
ened on the children of Onas and joined the 
French ; the irreverent savages were swarming 
in the vicinity of Albany, knocking the Knick- 
erbockers about as though they were only com- 
mon people ; it was feared that the Lenni 
Lenape would be won over to the majority, and 
v/ho would care for the sons of Onas then? 
Penn knew that he had the law and the right 
by the treaty on his side, but he was afraid 
some of the Iroquois had not heard of the de- 
cision and might scalp a few Friends before they 
could be committed for contempt. He knew 
there were enough men in the province who 

* It never occurred to the Governor t® apply for a pass, or to 
walk around. 

f If the Pennsylvanians didn't "supply" the Indians better 
than they did their Governor, it is easy to see why the Indians 
went over to the French. 



/Et. 50.] MO/^E PAMPHLETS. 255 

would rather fight than eat, to protect the non- 
combatants. Eighty men were appointed as 
the war contingent of Pennsylvania, with enough 
money to run them three months. And the In- 
dians could '^ run them the rest of the time. 

While he governed Pennsylvania vicariousl}^ 
Penn wrote a few pamphlets, and a preface to 
the Journal of George Fox, entitled " A Brief 
Account of the Rise and Progress of the People 
called Quakers, in which their Fundamental 
Principles, Doctrines, Worship, Ministry, and 
Discipline are plainly declared;" and as the war 
in America was over, he seemed to think there 
was no necessity for his returning to his prov- 
ince now, and so remained in England writing 
pamphlets and preaching, regularly forgetting 
some of his own wise maxims and never learn- 
ing that a house in London was a poor resi- 
dence for a Governor of Pennsylvania. " It is 
but just," said Penn in one of his maxims, " that 
those that reign by their princes should suffer 
for their princes ;" and his Pennsylvania col- 
onists accepted his maxim. '' Towards the set- 
tlers in his province," says Dixon, " Penn stood 

* And would. 



256 WILLIAM PENN. [1694 

exactly in the position of a feudal lord : the 
soil and the government were his personal 
property. Though in his first charter he had 
given up many of his rights, enough remained 
to create strife and bitterness in men so jealous 
of power. It was sufficient that he traced his 
rights to a source alien to their choice, to rouse 
discontent." 

This explains to a certain extent the obstinate 
refusal of the Pennsylvanians to pay the pro- 
prietor his long-sought quit-rents. The tax 
itself amounted to little, — a mere trifle, — but the 
principle was a great one. They would buy 
the land and pay for it, but once bought it was 
their own, and in their refusal to pay an annual 
quit-rent claimed by a feudal proprietor was 
involved the same principle that in later years 
Massachusetts maintained in her resistance to 
the tax on tea. It was the germ of democracy in 
Pennsylvania that grew into life and developed 
strength through all the years, until it came to 
full fruition in the city of its birth, and the 
Declaration of Independence only echoed the 
resistance of the Pennsylvanians against the 
quit-rents. And yet William Penn thought 
he was establishing a free republic, a pure 



JEt. 50.] ATO QUIT-RENTS. 257 

democracy, a "■ model state," when he retained 
the quit-rents in it, and when he insisted so 
strongly on his rights and privileges. But 
while this liberty-loving spirit and abhorrence 
of feudalism explain the persistent refusal of the 
Pennsylvanians to pay their quit-i-ents, they do 
not excuse them for their niggardly and un- 
grateful treatment of Penn in their refusal to 
grant him the supplies they voted so promptly 
to Fletcher. 

Among other important affairs of the prov- 
ince during the piping times of peace was the 
presentment of Robert Reman, at Chester, for 
"divining with a stick." The grand jury, fully 
awake to the demands and dangers of the 
times, also presented as a vicious book '' Cor- 
nelius Agrippa's Teaching Negromancy." It 
is thought the grand jury made some search 
for the author of this vicious, profane, and idle 
work on necromancy, under the impression that 
he was somewhere in the province. But they 
did not find him. He was gone. Nobody 
knew where, but it was some place outside of 
the jurisdiction of the Chester grand jury. 
The Assembly, in 1696, secured, after a long 
wrangle, Lieutenant-Governor Markham's sig- 



258 WILLIAM PENN. [1696. 

nature to a " bill of settlement" which largely 
increased the power of that body, giving it 
authority to originate bills, and to adjourn and 
assemble at its own pleasure rather than that of 
the Governor. And for these concessions it 
voted an appropriation of ^300 for the support 
of the government and ''for the relief of the 
distressed Indians of New York." The stern 
duty of killing off the superfluous white popula- 
tion of New York, which devolved upon these 
Indians, was a severe one, entailing upon them 
constant labor and almost sleepless vigilance. 
Many of the New-Yorkers had to be chased 
ten or fifteen miles before they could be caught 
and killed. Some of them were opposed to the 
operation of scalping, claiming that it was of no 
benefit whatever as a preventive, although the 
Indians assured them that no person ever had 
the small-pox after being scalped. Sometimes 
the white people resisted, and many Indians 
were seriously if not fatally injured in the per- 
formance of this duty. The braves had great 
callous bunions worn on their hands by the 
constant use of the scalping-knife, so they could 
now perform no manual labor. In some in- 
stances, depraved old Knickerbockers had 



JEt. 52.] SUFFERINGS OF THE INDIANS. 259 

palmed off wigs on the unsuspecting- savages 
for scalps, and as the French refused to pay the 
usual bounty on these hair goods, the poor In- 
dians lost heavily in such transactions. And 
when one noble child of the forest brought in a 
basketful of scalps taken from white children 
under three years of age, the French command- 
ant refused to receive them and would not pay 
him a cent for the lot, and the poor Indian lost 
his whole week's work, and was so depressed 
and disappointed that he never scalped another 
child, but devoted all his time and talents there- 
after to lifting the snowy locks of men and 
women of seventy years and upwards. And 
now the war was over, and the price of scalps 
had fallen until they weren't worth gathering, 
and when an Indian took one or two, just to 
keep his hand in, the pitiless New-Yorkers 
would fall upon him and cut him into so many 
pieces that the coroner would scratch himself 
bald trying to decide whether it was a powder- 
mill or freight-train. 

Oh, how sad the peace-loving people of Penn- 
sylvania were when they heard of the sufferings 
of these poor, overworked Indians ! They voted 
a big appropriation for their relief right away. 



260 WILLIAM PENN. [1696. 

This enabled the Indians to keep along until the 
next war broke out, when business would pick 
up a Httle. In accordance with this ancient 
precedent, it has ever since been the custom of 
the United States Government to take the best 
care of the worst Indians. 

Penn continued to preach and write without 
molestation, save in one instance, when he was 
arrested while preaching from the balcony of 
an inn, the arrest being made, doubtless, at the 
instigation of a lot of commercial travellers who 
wanted to sit on the balcony and smoke, and 
did not come to that house to listen to a sermon. 
Penn showed a license from the bishop, how- 
ever, and was immediately released by the 
magistrate, to the great mortification of the con- 
stable, who had to apologize and couldn't collect 
his fee. After this, being duly licensed accord- 
ing to law, Penn preached regularly. 

In January of this year Penn married Miss 
Hannah Callowhill, a daughter of Thomas Cal- 
lowhill, a Bristol merchant, and in a few weeks 
thereafter his eldest son, Springett, died. *' Much 
of my comfort and hope, "writes Penn, '' and one 
of the most tender and dutiful, as well as in- 
genious and virtuous youths I knew, if I may say 



iEt. 52.] DEATH OF HIS FIRST BORN. 26 1 " 

SO of my own dear child, in whom I lose all that 
any father could lose in a child, since he was 
capable of anything- that became a sober young 
man, my friend and companion, as well as 
most affectionate and dutiful child." It was 
indeed a heavy loss to the great founder of Penn- 
sylvania, for to this son, inheriting alike the 
manly courage and firm convictions of his father 
and Guli Springett's 'tenderness and softness 
of nature," Penn had hoped to leave his pro- 
vince. Now, alas ! the next heir in succession, 
his son William, was a youth of some good 
qualities, clever, generous to everybody except 
his father, brave in anything but morality, wild 
in his tastes and desires, sociable, frank — in fact, 
one of those characters usually described as 
** nobody's enemies but their own," which means 
they are everybody's enemies. Young William 
was not exactly the promising sort of youth to 
leave in charge of a rather restless province. 
And even now that province was growing more 
and more restless, assailing the Governor and 
what he called his "rights" through his Lieu- 
tenant-Governor, and they were making poor 
Markham realize the truth of Penn's maxim, 
" It is but just that those that reign by their 



262 WILLIAM PENN. [1696. 

princes should suffer for their princes." They 
badgered him, accused him of defrauding the 
revenue, and of protecting and standing in with 
pirates and smugglers, and it was a short day 
when they couldn't invent or discover some 
new cause of complaint. All this time William 
Penn remained in England, visited Ireland, went 
to Deptford to convert Peter the Great, kept 
away from Pennsylvania entirely, and was 
thereby laying up a great store of experience 
from which he could some day write a pamphlet 
" On the Exceeding Great Vanity and Foolish 
Idleness of Attempting to Lead a Horse with a 
Halter Three Thousand Miles Long ; Being as 
it were the Brief Experience of a Governor in 
London with a Province in America." 

The Tsar of Russia, of all the Russias in 
fact, Peter the Great, was at this time working 
in the royal shipyard at Deptford, as a ship- 
carpenter. The ancient Quakers had mighty 
noses for a king, and their missionaries got into 
nearly all the royal palaces and prisons in Eu- 
rope, in their passion for converting rulers and 
real dukes. They went for everything that sat 
on a throne, from the Pope himself down to 
the German prince of an eighty-acre Hesse 



iEt. 52.] AN EDIFYING INTERVIEW. 263 

something, or a Dutch monarch who lived and 
reigned with his cows in a wind-mill. Any- 
thing, so it was a king. Of course, when the 
Tsar came to Deptford, where he worked in 
the dockyard by da}^ and got drunk wherever 
he could find cheap rum at night, the Friends 
made a dead set for him. Thomas Story and 
Gilbert Molleson visited him, and wrestled with 
him, and sought to interest him on the subject 
of religion, their own denomination preferred, 
because Peter was, after the religion of his 
fathers, a violently pious man. Peter was much 
amused at their great bareback hat act, which 
they explained very fully to him, and taught 
him how to do it. These two missionaries 
knew no Russian or German, and Peter knew 
no English, so they were soon convinced they 
had converted^ the Tsar. They gave him *' Bar- 
clay's Apology," in Latin; gave him two copies 
of it, so that when he had read one copy to 
pieces he could start in on the other. Peter 
was greatly edified by this Latin book. He 
knew about as much Latin as the missionaries 
knew Russian, and probably did not read that 
book through in fifty years. But the joyous 
missionaries spread the tidings of the imperial 



264 WILLIAM PENN. [1697. 

conversion, and William Penn went with Prince 
Menzikoff to York Buildings, where Peter held 
his imperial sprees incognito, to land this mighty 
fish. He found the royal Muscovite curious 
and attentive, but still a most hopeless case of 
Quaker. 

" You are a new people," said the Tsar; '' will 
you fight any better than others ?" 

They told him they would permit the smallest 
state in South America to open their mail, in- 
sult their ministers, kill their chickens, and kick 
them all over their own house, without offering 
to strike back. 

" Then," said the Tsar, '' the United States is 
the right place for you. We have no use for 
you in Russia." ^ 

Penn was an excellent German scholar, and 
conversed easily with Peter in this language. 
The Muscovite attended several Quaker meet- 
ings, and the Baptists and Presbyterians fairly 
howled with envy. Penn wrote the Tsar a 
letter, and Janney says, '* The impression pro- 



* Peter might have given William come excellent hints about 
managing his province, and how to wring the slow-moving 
quit-rents out of reluctant tenants, had Penn only asked him 
about it. 



.Et. 52.] INTO POLITICS ONCE MORE. 265 

duced upon the Tsar by this intercourse with 
Friends in England appears to have been last- 
ing." It may have been lasting, but it certainly 
wasn't deep, because Peter began beheading 
the Streltzi and fighting with his neighbors soon 
after he returned to Russia, and kept it up with 
little intermission as long as he was able to lead 
an army. When he wasn't actively at war with 
some foreign foe, he was beating his companions 
in uproarious sprees, and making various public 
and private free-for-all exhibitions of his violent 
and ungovernable temper. Peter the Great was 
not, in a moral view, a very promising convert 
for any denomination. 

Penn cautiously, or rather, considering what 
his experience had taught him, incautiously 
waded into politics again. He couldn't keep 
out of it. The House of Commons was debat- 
ing a bill against blasphemy, and Penn rushed 
in with a pamphlet — '' A cautious Requisite 
in its consideration, showing the necessity of 
explaining the word Blasphemy, etc." The 
affrighted House, dreading lest Penn had once 
more become addicted to the pamphlet habit, 
dx^opped the bill before the Speaker could an- 
nounce its full title, and promised, if Penn would 



266 WILLIAM PENN. [1697. 

not write any more pamphlets, they would 
never look at the document again. 

It being now very necessary that Penn should 
return at once to Pennsylvania, he packed his 
trunks and went to Ireland, to hold a few meet- 
ings and look after his Irish estates, which by 
this time he had recovered, their former owners 
being without any such influence at court as 
Penn had been able to use for his friend Sir 
Robert Coltness. As Penn wrote to the Tsar, 
" the Quakers were an industrious people in 
their generation, and though against superfluity, 
yet lovers of ingenuity." And he was '' ingeni- 
ous" enough to live in London and govern, or 
rather govern at, a province in America, and 
hold on to the estates in Ireland which had 
been given his father as his reward for serving 
two opposing governments at the same time, — 
an " ingenious " piece of statecraft which has 
brought many of our modern statesmen to the 
ground. But they worked these things better 
in Sir William Penn's time. 

Formerly, when Penn travelled, he left Guli 
and the children at home. On this occasion, it 
will be observed, Mrs. Penn and the children 
went with him. On this journey Penn preached 



iEt. 53.] HORSES FOR THE HOSSIFERS. 267 

a great deal, looked after his estate of Shan- 
garry Castle, and was unable to get into prison 
or any serious trouble. On only one or two oc- 
casions was he molested. By an act of Parlia- 
ment, any man was allowed to seize any horse 
worth more than five guineas belonging to a 
Catholic, and retain it on paying or tendering 
that amount. Under this '' Act to make horse- 
stealing safe and easy," when a man saw a good 
horse in possession of a stranger, he merely ac- 
cused the stranger of being a Papist, and offered 
him five guineas for his steed. When Penn and 
his friends, on one of their missionary tours in 
Ireland, arrived at Ross, they ordered their 
horses ferried across the Nore, while they "re- 
turned to the tavern and refreshed themselves 
after their long ride." * Two young officers 
saw the excellent horses of the Quakers, and, 
informing the Mayor that Penn and his friends 
were Catholics, took the animals, swearing to 
their information with the easy grace that was 
known only to the regularly ordained liars of the 
established church in the seventeenth century. 
A few of the horses had been ferried over before 

* That is, each man called for what he wanted — same as they 
do now. 



268 WILLIAM PENN. [1697. 

the authorized robber}^ could be made, and with 
these Penn and some of his friends went on their 
way, the other members of the party remaining 
to sue out a replevin for the rest of the animals. 
The officers who stole the horses were placed 
under arrest, and but for Penn's gracious inter- 
cession they would have been dishonorably dis- 
missed the service/^ Penn wrote a few pam- 
phlets while in Ireland, and had a wind-mill with 
Rev. John Plympton, a deep-water Baptist, and 
a little set-to with the pamphlets with the 
Bishop of Cork, a home-rule agrarian, high 
Trinitarian, lights-on-the-altar young man. Penn 
whipped, in both instances. He says he did, 
himself. 

At Cashel, the meeting -of the Quakers was 
invaded by the Mayor at the instigation of the 
Bishop, who ordered the Friends to disperse, 
which they, with great promptness and sub^ 
mission to his will, did not. The discussion 
began to wax warm, when Penn, who was not 
in the meeting, but was in an adjoining room, — 
having heard, perhaps, that John Vaughton was 



* In Texas they would have been invited to a neck-tie party 
under a tree. Dancing in the air. Music by the string-band. 
No cards. 



JEt. 53.] GA THERING IN THE SHEKELS. 269* 

going to preach, — sent for the Mayor, talked to 
him gently but firmly, as one talks to a friend 
when he comes to borrow money, and finally 
sent him away, and the meeting was resumed 
with redoubled silence. The Bishop afterward 
explained to Penn that he was angry because 
all his congregation went off to the Quaker 
meeting and left him only the bare walls to 
preach to. He did not mind preaching to the 
bare walls and empty benches, he said ; in fact, 
he rather preferred them to his usual congrega- 
tion, as being superior in general intelligence 
and Christianity, but they didn't pan out nearly 
so well in the assay for collections. Penn im- 
mediately wrote him a pamphlet, and the mat- 
ter dropped. Afterward Penn held meetings 
and preached to the land-leaguers in Cork, and 
in Kildare, Limerick, Kilkenny, Tipperary, and 
other counties famous for the peaceful and law- 
abiding disposition of the natives. He also 
went to the barony of Imokelly, " where lay a 
great part of his Irish estates," and thence " to 
the barony of Ibaune and Barryoe, to view the 
rest of his estates in those parts." He had no 
trouble now about collecting " quit-rents" from 
his Irish tenantry. Ibaune and Barryoe and 



270 WILLIAM PENN. [1697. 

Imokelly were going to pay rents for nearly 
two hundred years before they got hold of the 
" Pennsylvania idea " of non-resident proprie- 
tors and quit-rents. Ireland was a thousand 
years older than Pennsylvania, but the ideas in 
Pennsylvania were as new as the land. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE GOVERNOR ON DECK. 

pETURNING from Ireland, Penn was once 
-■■ V more forcibly impressed with the fact that 
he was needed in Pennsylvania, and accordingly- 
looked around for some place else to which he 
could go. Finally he compromised* by going 
down to Deptford and seeing Thomas Story 
embark for the western world. But even the 
departure of Thomas Story did not allay the 
dissensions in the province. Markham had re- 
fused to pass the Jamaica Act against pirates, 
he had imprisoned a Commissioner for the 
Crown, just to^show him who was running the 
machine in Pennsylvania, and Colonel Quarry, 
a revenue officer sent to the provinces by the 
King, made the most and the worst of the Lieu- 
tenant-Governor's folly ; the provincial govern- 
ment, he reported, refused to assist him in catch- 
ing pirates, and when he did catch any the 
Quakers refused to put them in jail, lest the 
pirate might have been pirating from a sense of 
duty, and thus be punished for conscience' sake. 



2/2 WILLIAM PENN. [1698. 

At last matters became so bad in the province, 
or at least Colonel Quarry presented them in 
such a bad light, that the Council deprived 
Colonel Markham of his powers for five years. 
Added to this, word had reached Penn that 
there were altogether too many drinking-houses 
in Philadelphia for a city where all the houses 
looked so much like one another that it was a 
difficult matter for even a sober man to pick out 
his own residence after dark. And finally, Penn 
drew upon his agents in the province for '' three 
hundred and odd pounds," and the draft came 
back protested. In those times it ruffled a man's 
spirits beyond all description to have a draft 
come back protested, as it does to-day ; and as 
people are very much like other people, Penn 
received this wayward draft very much as a man 
receives a distant relative, poor but honest, 
whom he has not seen for thirty-two years 
and does not wish to see for thirty-two years 
more. Penn wrote to the delinquents at once. 
'■'■ Loving friends," he begins his letter — " Loving 
friends,* is it not my right by public obligation 
to six hundred pounds?" — because for that sum 

* If they had loved him less and paid him more, they had 
been better friends. 



JEt. S4-] MORE LOVE THAN MONEY. 273 

he had relinquished certain customs voted to 
him ; that is, he had reUnquished the customs, 
and now he had the six hundred pounds, at 
least he had it to get. And "• all my expenses 
in two years' withstanding of Edward Randall, 
at my great charge," " my expenses in coming 
over and prosecuting the dispute with Lord 
Baltimore, which held near a year," "and last 
of all, my quit-rents, of which I have not seen 
for twelve years one sixpence." No matter how 
Penn began a letter to his colony, it was sure 
to run into the quit-rents before it got down to 
" Y'rs tr'ly." 

His " loving friends" were deeply touched by 
the beautiful and just sentiments expressed in 
this letter, and immediately did not send him 
his money. They valued Penn as a friend ; as 
a Governor, they respected him ; as a religious 
teacher and guide, they venerated him ; and as a 
just and humane creditor, they swindled him. 

At last Penn, all the other places being closed, 
packed his hat-box and, accompanied by his wife 
and his daughter Letitia,* sailed for America, 

* In some of the Quaker biographies of Penn this daughter 
is called Letty, and Penn himself calls her Tishe; but in a work 
of this gravity and severity such vain babbling and idle appel- 
lations cannot be admitted. 



274 WILLIAM PENN, [1699. 

September 9, 1699. It does not appear that 
Mrs. Penn or Letitia felt any gnawing desire to 
come to America, nor did they want to stay 
after they got here, and Penn has been blamed 
for yielding to their importunities and influence, 
and absenting himself from the province which 
so much needed the wisdom and strength of his 
personal government. William Penn, Jr., did 
not come. This rapid young man remained in 
London to complete his education, having quite 
a number of evil and iniquitous habits to form 
before he felt himself competent to govern a 
turbulent province that was much given to feed- 
ing Indians and evading its quit-rents. 

Three months the Penn family tossed on the 
waves of the restless sea, and then landed at 
Philadelphia on Sunday, — which was not right. 
The ''yellow fever" had been raging in Phila- 
delphia through the autumn months, and was 
just abating when Penn arrived. The death- 
rate had run up to seven and eight a day, and 
Story says in his journal : '' Great was the fear 
that fell upon all flesh. I saw no lofty nor airy 
countenance, nor heard any vain jesting to move 
men to laughter; nor witty repartee to raise 



iEt. 54-] TRAGEDY OF THE EMPTY GUN, 2J$ 

mirth; nor extravagant feasting to excite the 
lusts and desires of the flesh above measure ; 
but every face gathered paleness, and many 
hearts were humbled, and countenances fallen 
and sunk, as of those who waited every moment 
to be summoned to the bar and numbered to 
the grave." 

Friend Story also relates that the Yearly 
Meeting of the Friends was held at the usual 
time, notwithstanding the plague, and that 
"there was not one taken ill during the whole 
time of the meeting, either of those that came 
there on that account, or of the people of the 
town." Just why the Board of Health did not 
order the meeting to remain in session, then, 
until the epidemic disappeared, one cannot un- 
derstand. Perhaps it was thought to be vain 
and undignified to use the Yearly Meeting as a 
general colonial vaccination. 

When Penn landed at Chester, the usual thing 
happened. Two young men, probably stu- 
dents from the Pennsylvania Military Institute, 
founded a great many years later, fired a salute 
from two small field-pieces, and one of the men 
ran his arm down the gun to see if it was 



276 WILLIAM PENN, [1699. 

loaded.* It is an instructive study in human 
nature, this simple fact that even two hundred 
years ago two men and a cannon could not get 
together and separate with more than three 
arms for the crowd. Just enough to go around. 
But then one man, the monopoHst of the party, 
would have two thirds of the stock. As usual, 
the sad affair cast a gloom over the entire com- 
munity. 

Penn lost no time in convening his Council 
and the General Assembly, and made them un- 
derstand that the Governor was on deck. With 
his characteristic energy he fairly compelled the 
Assembly to enact laws for the '' prevention of 
illicit trade" and '' the discouragement of piracy." 
Perhaps it would have been just as well to make 
them for the discouragement of illicit trade and 
the prevention of piracy. But our glorious an- 
cestors didn't seem to want to be too hard on 
the poor pirates.f Piracy was a genteel occu- 
pation at that time. Soon after Penn arrived at 
Philadelphia, two alleged pirates were arrested, 
and one of them was the son-in-law of Lieuten- 
ant-Governor Markham, Penn's cousin. It took 

* It was. f Perhaps the pirates " loved their Queen." 



^t. 54.] PENNSBURY MANOR. 277 

the Assembly sixteen days to pass these two 
bills. When it is remembered how proud Penn 
was seventeen years before, when his first As- 
sembly passed fifty-nine laws in three days, it 
will be seen how rapidly the legislature was im- 
proving- and modernizing itself. The later legis- 
lature required more grease to make it run 
smoothly. And the pirates and illicit traders 
had evidently ''greased" it. 

" On their arrival at Philadelphia," says Jan- 
ney, " the Governor and his family went to 
lodge ^ at Edward Shippen's, where they re- 
mained about a month. Penn then took a house 
known as the slate-roof house, on Second Street, 
between Chestnut and Walnut, at the southeast 
corner of Norris' Alley. Here was born, about 
two months after they landed, his son John, the 
only one of his children born in this country, 
and therefore called ' the American.' " 

Pennsbury, the Governor's country mansion, 
on the Delaware near the falls of Trenton, was a 
very comfortable hovel for a starving child of 
poverty who couldn't get his quit-rents, and 
didn't care for the vanities and frills and " gaudy 

* This confirms our previous suspicion that Penn was a 
Mason. 



278 WILLIAM PENN. [1699. 

carpets and side-boards " of this idle old world. 
Markham originally laid out an estate here of 
about eight thousand acres, but the Governor 
gave much of it away. The hut in which the pov- 
erty-stricken Governor hid his gaunt form in the 
times of the quit-rent famine was two stories high, 
built of " fine brick," and covered with tiles. It 
had a front of sixty feet on the Delaware, with a 
superb view of the river. The house was forty 
feet deep, " and the brew-house, a large wooden 
building covered with shingles, stood back some 
little distance from the mansion, and was con- 
cealed among the trees." " I am a man of quiet 
tastes," said Penn, and then he went back to the 
brew-house, amid the all-concealing trees, and 
tasted something. The rooms of the manor- 
house were arranged in suites. " Suites to 
sweet," said Penn to Hannah, although the 
house had been built for GuU. The interior 
ornaments and decorations had been sent from 
England. The shanty was comfortably fur- 
nished. I quote from Dixon : *' Mahogany was 
a luxury then unknown ; but his spider tables 
and high-backed carved chairs were of the finest 
oak. An inventory of the furniture is still ex- 
tant ; there were a set of Turkey worked chairs, 



JEt. 54.] A COMFORTABLE HOVEL. 279 

arm-chairs for ease, and couches with plush and 
satin cushions for luxury and beauty. In the 
parlor stood the great leather chair of the pro- 
prietor; in every room were found cushions 
and curtains of satin, camlet, damask, and striped 
linen ; and there is a carpet mentioned as being 
in one apartment, though at that period such 
an article was hardly ever seen except in the 
palaces of kings. His side-board furniture was 
also that of a gentleman ; it included a service 
of silver, — plain but massive, — blue and white 
china, a complete set of Tunbridge ware, and a 
great quantity of damask table-cloths and fine 
napkins. The table was served as became his 
rank, plainly but plentifully. Ann Nichols was 
his cook ; and he used to observe in his plea- 
santry, '' Ah, the book of cookery has outgrown 
the Bible, and^I fear is read oftener; to be sure, 
it is of more use.* His cellars were well stocked ; 
Canary, claret, sack, and Madeira being the fa- 
vorite wines consumed by his family and their 
guests. Besides these nobler drinks there was 
a plentiful supply, on all occasions of Indian or 
general festivity, of ale and cider.^ Penn's own 

*This was not the common five-a-glass cider that feebly 
struggles to keep pace with the pink lemonade of the circus of 



280 WILLIAM PENN. [1699. 

wine seems to have been Madeira ; and he cer- 
tainly had no dislike to the temperate pleasures 
of the table. In one of his letters to his stew- 
ard, Sotcher, he writes : * Pray send us some two 
or three smoked haunches of venison and pork 
— get them from the Swedes ; also some smoked 
shads and beefs;' adding with delicious unction, 
' the old priest at Philadelphia had rare shads.' " 
Moreover, Penn rode and drove only thorough- 
bred horses, of the best blood in England ; 
kept his own *' yacht," — at least it was called a 
yacht then ; it is described as a six-oar barge, 
and all the time he was in England he would al- 
low no one to use it. William Penn and his 
family dressed well, and not in very Quakerly 
style. '' The ladies wore caps and buckles, silk 
gowns, and gold ornaments." While in Amer- 
ica, '' Penn had no less than four wigs, all in the 
same year, purchased at a cost of nearly twenty 
pounds." He countenanced " innocent country 
dances " by his own presence and the attend- 
ance of his family. And while he lived well 
and in a manner and style befitting the station 
and dignity of the Governor of Pennsylvania 

to-day. It was a New Jersey brand, and a pint of it would 
double up a Conestoga sachem at forty yards. 



^t. 54.] SIC TRANSIT OF VENUS. 28 1 

and a well-bred English gentleman of noble 
family, he was charitable and generous, and the 
needy and sick ever found in him a friend who 
always coupled his words of cheer with a loaf 
of bread, and never took his hand out of his 
pocket empty. And his handsome house at 
Pennsbury, his well-spread table, his pleasant 
hospitality, and his Christian, unassuming, mod- 
est philanthropy wasn't costing the province 
of Pennsylvania a cent. 

Pennsbury has passed away, with so many 
other mementos of the great Quaker in this 
country, into the hands of the omnipresent relic- 
hunter. Some time about 1780 the manor-house 
was torn down and distributed. A chair that 
belonged to Penn is now in the Pennsylvania 
Hospital ;* John Smith has another ; so has 
Thomas Jackson; so has Mrs. Belvawney; all 
the Joneses have one apiece; and every student 
of the University of Pennsylvania is presented 
with one when he graduates, and if he belongs 
to the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, which was 
founded by Penn, he gets two. William Penn 
didn't do anything, while he was in America, 

* This chair is genuine. 



282 WILLIAM PENN. [1699. 

but sit down in chairs for the benefit of pos- 
terity. He was a thorough-bred long-haired 
Enghsh setter. 

He hated tobacco, and "on one occasion Gov- 
ernor Jennings, of New Jersey (who was also 
an eminent minister among Friends), and some 
of his friends were enjoying their pipes, a prac- 
tice which the gentlemanly Penn disliked. On 
hearing that Penn's barge was in sight, they 
put away their pipes, that their friend might 
not be annoyed, and endeavored to conceal 
from him what they were about. He came 
upon them, however, somewhat suddenly, and 
pleasantly remarked that he was glad they had 
sufficient sense of propriety to be ashamed of 
the practice. Jennings, rarely at a loss for an 
answer, rejoined that they were not ashamed, 
but desisted to avoid hurting a weak brother." "^ 
In connection with this pleasant anecdote it 
may be edifying to quote, from the same author- 
ity, from a letter written by the great tobacco- 
hater to his secretary about this time : *' Let the 
Indians come hither and send in the boats for 
more rum, and the match-coats, and let the 

* Janney. 



^t. 54.] OLD SETTLER REMLNISCENCES. 283 

Council adjourn to this place." " More rum" 
has always been a very poor civilizer with the 
Indians. More tobacco and less rum has ever 
a much better effect upon the noble red man, 
and William Penn's ordinarily level head was 
very hilly on the subject of rum and tobacco. 

Only the ruins of the brew-house, it is said, 
now remain of the pleasant estate of Pennsbury. 
The old manor-house itself has joined the in- 
numerable caravan of Penn chairs, has been sat 
down upon literally, and lives only in the ten- 
der memories of white-haired old prevarica- 
tors who never saw it. But the memory of its 
courtly, gentle master, his manly qualities and 
Christian virtues, his patience and unselfishness, 
the sorrows and triumphs of his life, live on and 
on, over the decay of all these material and 
unnecessary reminders of his existence. 

The winter of 1699 is said by the oldest in- 
habitants of that time to have been one of almost 
unprecedented severity, although, in deference 
to our own oldest inhabitants, we question if 
there have not been since that time winters of 
such exceeding cold that their resentments are 
not to be countenanced by any winter of the 
seventeenth century. Sutcliff, in his *' Travels in 



284 WILLIAM PENN. [1699. 

Some Parts of North America," relates as some- 
thing remarkable an anecdote of the Founder. 
One night William Penn, in his travels during 
this cold winter, lodged at the house of some 
person whose name is not given, or else is sup- 
pressed for family reasons, as it is the most im- 
portant name in the story. Knowing the habits 
of that family in its entertainment of guests, 
people would like to know the family name, in 
order to avoid the houses of the descendants. 
It seems, from the narrative, that after Penn 
went to his room the family was seized with an 
uncontrollable desire to know how a Governor 
appeared when he crawled into the forbidding 
awfulness of a spare-room bed, and wrapped 
the drapery of the 36°-below blankets and zinc- 
plate sheets about him and lay down to freeze. 
So the family went up and successively pasted 
their eyes against the key-hole and looked in at 
the shivering Quaker preparing for death on 
Mont Blanc. Sutcliff says only a boy twelve 
years old went up, but SutchfT lived near the 
seashore and must have been accustomed to 
relating stories for marines only, because every- 
body knows that the last person in the house to 
think of that key-hole act would be the boy. 



^t. 54.] 7^00 THIN. 285 

He never thought of it until he saw the rest 
of the family coming down, suspiciously and 
supernaturally innocent as to demeanor, and 
red as to one eye. At all events, the boy went 
up and glued his eye to the key-hole, remained 
there until he was almost frozen, and then came 
down and reported that he saw the Governor 
kneel down at his bedside and repeat his even- 
ing prayer. Now, it is well known that the 
habit of prayer was not so unusual with William 
Penn that his host's family had to go about 
speering through key-holes to prove it on him. 
If the story is true, and undoubtedly it is true, 
although extremely unimportant, the only re- 
markable thing about it is that the Governor 
should kneel down to pray in a parlor bed-room 
in December. It seems hardly possible that 
the Governor of Pennsylvania should not know 
that it is the custom in America, when a man is 
sentenced to be confined for one night in the 
Arctic horrors of an old-fashioned '' spare 
room," for him to plunge into bed with his 
overcoat and boots on, and chatter his shiver- 
ing prayers under the frigid blankets.^ 

* Erratum. — Read blanket. There is never more than one. 



286 WILLIAM PENN. [169^. 

In his " Historical Notes" Mr. Benjamin M. 
Nead says there was no choice of representa- 
tives for the Assembly of 1699 from New 
Castle, owing to a disturbance at the polls, 
and "Sheriff Joseph Wood forwarded, as his 
return, a half-sheet of blank paper only, and a 
letter containing this message: ' I here enclosed 
send you the names of the Council and Assem- 
blymen chosen here on the loth instant. To 
give you any reason for such an election is be- 
yond my power; have had no discourse with 
any of the electors about it' " The Sheriff was 
promptly summoned before the Council to an- 
swer for this vain babbling and frivolous and 
profane misconduct. He "disavowed any in- 
tention of wrong-doing, declaring that he had 
sent the blank sheet of paper as a joke." 

This is the first joke on record in Pennsyl- 
vania. It is interesting as a finely preserved 
specimen of a joke of the vintage of 1699, and 
no less interesting is the record which shows in 
what earnest and severe temper the Council of 
that day gazed upon the pioneer joker of the 
province of Pennsylvania, the forerunner of 
Charles G. Leland, Charles Heber Clark, Fran- 
cis Wells, and other jesters of a lighter and 



iEt. 54.] A BUD OF PROMISE. 287 

brighter era, when a man could perform a 
single-hand joke without being arrested and 
dragged before the Council for it. This Penn- 
sylvania joke was preceded in Virginia by the 
first touch of '' American humor" about eighty- 
one years,* thus showing that with all the won- 
derful advantages of the virgin soil and mar- 
vellous climate of the new world, it required 
nearly a century for a germ of humor to develop 
and grow to the full fruition of a strong and 
fearless joke, which spread its bright wings to 
catch the morning breeze, and soared into the 
broad empyrean of progressive thought and 
emancipated intellect', a glad, free thing, with 
Italics at one end and a hyphen in the middle 
to prop it up, and translate its joyous song to 
the dull ear of the wise and good.f 

* See Charles Dudley Warner's " Life of Capt. John Smith," 
p. 191. 
I Copyright secured. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE SKELETON IN THE WOOD-PILE. 

THE colored brother was now discovered 
lurking in the gloomy recesses of the dark 
and silent wood-pile. 

He was there when Penn founded the Key- 
stone State. Penn found him here when he 
landed in Philadelphia, clanking fetters and all. 
Queen Elizabeth had the honor of extending 
the commerce of England to the slave-pens of 
the Gold-Coast, and long before her time, in 
continental countries, anything made in the 
image of God, with a black skin, was con- 
sidered property. Slaves were held in all the 
American colonies, and if a rnan did not own 
slaves, it was usually because he was too poor 
to buy them. In common with all other good 
people, the ancient Pennsylvanians bought their 
servants rather than hire them. When Wil- 
liam Penn, in 1685, wrote about training up 
two men and a boy in the art of gardening, he 



^t. 55-] " CUSSED BE CAJVAAJV." 289 

says, " It were better they were blacks, for 
then a man has them while they live." Four- 
teen years before that time George Fox had 
advised the Friends of Barbadoes, in regard to 
their slaves, that " after certain years of servi- 
tude they should make them free," but it does 
not appear that any of the slave-owning Friends 
unloaded because George Fox said so. 

The colored man remained in the seclusion 
of the fuel department until 1688, only six years 
after the founding of Pennsylvania, when, as 
we have already seen, some of the German 
Friends, at their meeting in Germantown, 
spoke their minds freely on the subject of 
human slavery, and made the first protest 
against it in America. The meeting itself as a 
body, however, dodged the issue, and ^'judged 
it not to be so proper for this meeting to give a 
positive judgment in the case." But the per- 
sonal protest of Daniel Pastorius and his 
friends, though not adopted by the Society, 
made itself felt, and eight years later the Yearly 
Meeting again took up the irrepressible subject 
very gingerly, and advised that " Friends be 
careful not to encourage the bringing in of any 
more negroes, and that such as have them be 



290 WILLIAM PENN. [1700 

careful of them, bring them to meetings, and 
restrain them from loose living as much as in 
them lies, and from rambling abroad on first 
days or other times." 

The Germantown leaven was working, al- 
though not until eighty years later did the 
Society of Friends embody in its discipline an 
outspoken prohibition of slavery, and nearly 
two centuries had passed away when the 
sword, with bloody judgment, made into a 
righteous and irrevocable decree the brave 
protest so bravely spoken by the Friends of 
Germantown. The Quaker meeting-house was 
the cradle of abolitionism and emancipation. 

In the spring of 1700, Penn made an effort to 
" improve the condition of the negro by legal 
enactments." He introduced in the Council a 
bill to " regulate the morals and marriages of 
negroes." This bill was readily passed by the 
Council, the members of that body being all 
members of the Society of Friends. But the 
Assembly promptly killed the bill when it came 
into their hands, and under the sanction of this 
body the slaves went on marrying as numer- 
ously and carelessly as they pleased, and pur- 
sued the unguarded ways of their earthly pil- 



JEt. 56.] THE POPULAR VOICE. 29 1 

grimage with no check upon their baggage or 
their conduct 

The Founder, now turned from the Assembly 
to his own Society, and at fhe next monthly 
meeting laid this subject before it, and be- 
sought the Friends to '■' be very careful in dis- 
charging a good conscience toward the Indians 
and negroes in all respects." The meeting ap- 
pointed a meeting for the negroes, "■ to be kept 
once a month." The Friends thus early sought 
to promote the spiritual welfare of their slaves. 
But they still held them as slaves, and emanci- 
pation as a means of grace was not resorted to 
until many years afterward. William Penn, it 
is true, gave all his slaves their freedom in his 
will, although the will appears to have been 
carried out as wills usually are — as the heirs 
and executor wish it, and not as the testator 
intended. A letter from James Logan to 
Hannah Penn, quoted by Janney, says : " The 
proprietor, in a will left with me, at his depart- 
ure hence, gave all his negroes their freedom, 
but tJiis is entirely private ; however, there are 
very few left. Sam died soon after your de- 
parture hence, and his brother James very 
lately. Chevalier, by a written order from his 



292 WILLIAM PENN. [1700. 

master, had his liberty several years ago, so 
that there are none left but Sue, whom Letitia 
claims, or did claim, as given to her when 
she went to England, but how rightfully I 
know not. These things you can best dis- 
cuss. There are besides two old negroes quite 
worn, that remained of three which I received 
eighteen years ago of E. Gibbs's estate of 
New Castle Co." 

It appears not to have been a very SAveeping 
emancipation, after all. Penn meant well, but 
these things can be and are done much better 
by the living than by the heirs of a dead mas- 
ter. To a lame man, it would appear from this 
letter that of the slaves freed by this will, Sam 
died before his master got to England ; James 
died soon after ; Chevalier was free because 
Penn manumitted him in time and by his own 
hand; Letitia, who was not in the emanci- 
pation business, laid her gentle hands upon Sue, 
will or no will ; and there were left, to enjoy 
their freedom under the Governor's will, two 
decrepit old darkies, who had worked them- 
selves clear out as slaves, were not now worth 
their keep, and probably at this time were not 



^t. 56.] A GROWING CHILD. 293 

able to take care of themselves. Such was old- 
fashioned emancipation. 

William Penn, however, was ever a kind and 
humane master, and his intentions were just 
and noble. But this is one of the instances 
where ^' his confidence in persons less virtuous 
than himself" disarranged his plans and vetoed 
his wishes. While he owned slaves, it must be 
borne in mind that the morality of his time ap- 
proved of slavery, and he was a better master 
to his slaves than some of our neighbors are to 
their employes. 

An absence of sixteen years had done its cer- 
tain work in weaning the rugged and healthy 
infant province Penn had planted in the wilder- 
ness away from its loving Founder. Sixteen 
years ; and such years they had been, pregnant 
with great events, restless with the birth and 
growth of ideas. Twice in that time Penn had 
seen the greatest throne in the world made 
vacant, once by the mighty hand of death, and 
once by the hand of the people scarcely less 
mighty. Persecution, cruelty, and bloodshed, 
in the sacred name of religion, had raged over 
the kingdom, desolating homes, filling the pri- 



294 WILLIAM PENN. [1700. 

sons, and drenching the block with the bravest 
and purest blood of England. Sidney and 
Monmouth died under the axe; Jeffreys had 
run the limit of his evil and cruel career ; 
James, torn from his throne, had met defeat in 
England and disgraceful rout in Ireland ; Penn 
from the estate of a prince had fallen to the 
obscurity of a fugitive, death had entered his 
household and taken away the best and dear- 
est ; war with France broke out, and closed 
with honor to the English arms ; the dissenters 
of England had at last worn out persecution by 
patience and matchless courage and glorious 
faith in the righteousness of their cause, until 
the meeting-house and conventicle were as safe 
as the church, and no man's prayers could shut 
him in a dungeon ; and with all these wonder- 
ful changes in the world in which he lived 
these sixteen years, could Penn imagine that 
the New World was standing still? Did he 
suppose he would find his " model state" just 
where he left it ? Could he not understand the 
murmur of discontent already flowing from 
colony to colony, and spreading a contagion of 
restlessness through the provinces? Sixteen 
years? In those stirring days that was time 



JEt. 56.] GROWN OUT OF RECOGNITION. 295 

enough to build a new state on the ashes of an 
old. 

Penn had seen this in England : he was a 
child when Cromwell builded the Common- 
wealth on the ruins of the throne, and a boy 
when the King came back to his own and the 
throne was established on the wreck of the 
Commonwealth ; he was a man of broad ex- 
perience, keep insight, and wide political influ- 
ence when William stepped on the neck of 
James to ascend the throne. And yet with all 
these instructive scenes rolling before him on 
the panorama of events, he stayed away from 
his province in the New World and thought he 
could govern it. Sixteen years ! The Blue 
Anchor Tavern that he saw finished on Dock 
Street had been hidden by the grander houses 
of the city he planned; for now more than ** a 
thousand finisht houses" his capital boasted. 
Immigrants fleeing from the lash of persecution 
had crowded into his province and made it 
prosperous. In the wake of its prosperity 
came the flotsam and jetsam of the tide. Men 
came to Pennsylvania who cared naught for 
Penn, and less for his religion ; men came who 
had never or scarcely heard of William Penn ; 



296 WILLIAM PENN. [1700. 

men came who knew him only to dishke him ; 
men came who hated his ideal of the perfect 
state ; good men, bad men, weak men, slavers, 
smugglers, pirates, men of all conditions came 
to Pennsylvania, w4th their own political ideas. 
When Penn returned to his province after his 
absence of sixteen years, he did not find the 
state he left. He found a people who knew not 
Penn, and who regarded a governor or pro- 
prietor as a figure-head that should be allowed 
only the least possible amount of power. 

The seeds of democracy Penn had sowed in 
the wilderness " had taken root and flourished 
with the unexpected luxuriance of a Canada 
thistle or the dog-fennel of the prairies. The 
province had grown democratic even more 
rapidly than Penn had anticipated or wished. 
While he had been sixteen years in England, 
and most of that time a constant attendant upon 
the King, a favorite with royalty and a power 
in the court, the colonists had been receiving a 
very different education in America, and all 



* The reader will kindly excuse me for making no reference 
in this connection to Cadmus and his little experiment in pro- 
ductive dentistry. I thought of it, but grandly refrained from 
using it. 



iEt. 56.] ARMED NEUTRALITY. 297 

their dealings with the Crown only served to 
intensify their disHke for it. 

The Assembly met Penn this year in an atti- 
tude of " armed neutrality" if not open hostility."^ 
It was called to meet at New Castle as a small 
libation of taffy for the lower counties, and 
Penn briefly recommended a revisal of the laws, 
the settling of property, and a supply for the 
support of the government, closing by recom- 
mending to the House amity and concord 
among its members. The Assembly did not 
waste any time on the promotion of amity and 
concord ; no committee was appointed on that 
subject. The only matter it appeared to har- 
monize upon in perfect unity was the revision 
of the laws. They were ready, willing, and 
anxious to annul the old and frame a new con- 
stitution right away ; but Penn was less anx- 
ious for this heroic method of mending the old 
constitution, and but little progress was made 
in that direction at this session. Then the rep- 
resentatives from the territories and the prov- 
ince began wrangling over the quota of repre- 
sentation. The members from the territories 

* The classic reader is requested to insert here something 
about the hand of steel in the silken glove. 



298 WILLIAM PENN. [1700. 

went in for minority representation. They 
claimed that as the territories had the smallest 
population, they should therefore have the 
largest representation, in order to strike a gen- 
eral average. They threatened to secede at 
once if ever the province organized any more 
counties, ''and thereb}^ more representatives 
were added, so that the number of the repre- 
sentatives of the people in legislation in the 
province should exceed those of the territories." 
Finally this was compromised by Penn, who 
proposed " that in all matters and things what- 
soever wherein the territories were or should 
be particularly concerned, in interest or privi- 
lege, distinct from the province, then, and in 
that case, no act, law, or ordinance, m any wise, 
should pass in any Assembly in this province, 
unless two parts in three of the members of the 
said territories, and the majority of the mem- 
bers of the province, should concur therein." 
This quieted the territory men for the time, but 
they promised to bring up the subject of the 
union at the next session, and at every succeed- 
ing session, in fact. 

Then there was the supply for the support of 
the Government ; ;^2,ooo were to be raised, and 



iEt. 56.] A MODEST MINORITY. 299 

in levying" the tax, the members for the province 
intimated that if the territories insisted on an 
equal representation and voice and vote in all 
matters pertaining to the state, they should also 
raise half of the supply. But the territory 
members declined the flattering proposition. 
They explained that they wanted to strike a fair 
average in this matter, and would agree to a 
just and righteous compromise. They would 
agree to do all the talking and most of the vot- 
ing, and let the members for the province raise 
all the money. How did that strike them ? It 
did not seem to strike the provincial representa- 
tives as altogether the proper caper, and in turn 
they submitted four propositions, each looking 
to an equal tax on property both in the provinces 
and territories ; but the territories voted them 
down, being in a minority. Lack of space for- 
bids my explaining how this was done. The 
representatives of the territories had only one 
rule in voting on any bill or motion. When the 
province voted '•'• yea" the territories voted 
"nay," and when the province voted against 
any measure the members for the territories 
worried that measure through, if they had to sit 
up all night. The members for the territories 



3CO WILLIAM PENN. [1700. 



seem to have been very pleasant, peaceably dis- 
posed men.* 

Once more the wisdom and long-suffering 
patience of the Governor cast the crude petro- 
leum of compromise upon the troubled winds of 
legislative debate, with the proposition that the 
province should raise i^ 1,575, and the territories 
^^425. This looked fair to the territories, and 
the Pennsylvania Assembly went home, having 
for the first time since the founding of the prov- 
ince voted a supply to the only Governor who, 
up to that time, deserved one at their hands. 

A terrible riot broke out in East Jersey about 
the time the legislature adjourned. Men stood 
out in the streets and called one another all sorts 
of names; casual bricks — whole and bats — 
strewed the highways thick as the leaves that 
strew autumnal brooks in Vallambrosa,t only 
somewhat harder and rather larger; windows 
were broken, grass was pulled up by the roots, and 
tumultuous horror brooded over the pleasant 
valleys of Appeljacque, — all because an insolent 
criminal on trial asked an East Jersey magis- 
trate some questions that his honor couldn't 

* After they were buried. f Original. 



JEU 56.] QUELLED BY A PAMPHLET. 3OI 

answer. The august courts of this country 
had not at that time attained the Guiteau state 
of passive submission. 

When Penn heard of the riot, he immediately 
pulled on his big boots, and calling " twelve of 
the most respectable Friends about him," girded 
on his two-handed pamphlet with the terrible 
name, and rode for the scene of conflict. But 
long, long before he got there, the insurgents 
heard he was coming and gat them unto their 
homes in greate terrour, and did there abide in 
all feare and submissfulnesse. 

Penn had now some leisure to attend to the 
noble red men. As usual, the guileless savages 
had some land to sell, and they knew Penn was 
the best man in the world to buy land. Before 
he sailed for England, in 1684, Penn bought "all 
that tract of land lying on both sides of the 
river Susquehanna and the lakes adjacent, in or 
near the province of Pennsylvania," from the 
Iroquois Indians, for ;^ioo. Now the Susque- 
hanna Indians came into court, and said there 
was a cloud on Penn's title ; that the Iroquois 
could not make him a deed of that land, because 
they had only acquired it temporarily, and in 
the most unquakerlike way, by pounding the 



302 WILLIAM PENN. [1700. 

ground with the Susquehannas, who were the 
rightful owners, tomahawking a divers many 
of them, and driving them away from their own 
land, which they had themselves, with great 
pains and much scalping, acquired in a Hke 
manner from its former owners, — although they 
didn't say anything about that, — and now, they 
didn't want to make a fuss about it, but if 
William Penn really wanted that land, they 
would sell it to him cheap for cash, or on 
long time, say fifteen minutes, with approved 
security. 

So Penn, Jbelieving the Indians, and knowing 
not that they were taught to lie before they 
were weaned, bought this same land over again, 
this time from the Susquehannas. 

The Susquehannas got their money and goods 
for the land, and then went back to the forest 
primeval, and around the blazing camp-fire, 
under the whispering hemlocks, in the long 
shadows of the stately pines, and amid the 
small but numerous inhabitants of their humble 
tepees, they told what a good thing they had 
made out of those old Iroquois timber-claims on 
the Susquehanna. The other Indians, being as- 
sured that in the matter of a land-deal William 



iEt. 56.] EARLY POST-SUTLERSHIPS. 303 

Penn was but as a sucker, said, '' Go to ; let us 
arise and sell Brother Onas these Iroquois lands 
ourselves." 

So Connoodaghoh, King of the Conestogas, 
and a lot of other kings, his most gracious 
majesty King of the Shawnees, '' the restless 
nation of wanderers," the lynx-eyed chief of 
the Ganawese,^ and a king of the Onondagas, 
came down to Philadelphia in April, 1701, and 
told William Penn that he might be and was the 
only genuine Onas of Philadelphia, but they 
were the Onas of that Iroquois reservation, and 
he must not neglect to recollect it. Penn at 
once opened up another line of presents, and 
the tramps of the forest graciously confirmed 
the two purchases he had already made of this 
same land. It may be that Penn kept on buy- 
ing this Iroquois land of new Indians so long as 
he remained in America, but there is no record 
of any further sales. 

In order that the Indians might be protected 
from swindling traders, it was decided at this 
last treaty that only Penn himself and his im- 
mediate successors should have authority to 

* Brother of the oxide of manganese. 



304 WILLIAM PENN. [1701. 

license Indian traders. This was the beginning 
of the monopoly in post-sutlerships. 

It was also decided by the Governor and his 
Council '' that no rum should be sold to any 
Indians but their chiefs, and in such quantities 
as the Governor and Council shall think fit, to 
be disposed of by the chiefs to the Indians about 
them as they shall see cause." This made thin 
gleaning for the other Indians, and the haughty 
chieftain gradually fell into the royal habit of 
doing all the drinking for his tribe. It kept his 
most gracious majesty busy, but he was fond of 
employment, and loved to toil at the earthen 
jug, while his gentle wife or two chewed the 
bear-skins soft and pliable, or idly hoed the 
rustling maize, or with resounding blows and 
muffled grunts laid in the winter wood. 

During this summer, a letter from the King 
was laid before the Assembly, demanding a con- 
tribution of i^350 for the construction and main- 
tenance of forts in New York. The Assembly 
was greatly distressed. It had a hard time all 
round. Whenever William Penn wanted a sup- 
ply or asked for his quit-rents, they reminded 
each other that although the Governor was a 
Quaker, all the colonists were not, and it didn't 



Ml. 57.] CONVENIENT PIETY. 305 

make any difference to them whether he got 
any suppHes or not. But when the King called 
upon them for a war appropriation, they sud- 
denly remembered that their constituents, for 
the greater part, were Quakers, and their 
peculiar views must be regarded with all due 
respect by the Assembly. After mature delib- 
eration, therefore, the Assembly declined to 
vote the supply required by the King, on the 
remarkable grounds of the tax recently levied 
for the support of the Government, "• and the 
quit-rents due "! Those blessed quit-rents ! The 
casual observer would be apt to remark that 
they were due, as not a shilling of them had 
been paid in eighteen years. And then to 
strengthen their reasons with the most glaring 
incongruities that could be suggested, the As- 
sembly — Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, peace- 
makers, fighters, and all — begged the Governor 
to assure the King that they were ready to com- 
ply with his demands " as far as their religious 
persuasions would permit." 

This grows better and better, when we re- 
member this is the same devout body that curtly 
refused to pass a bill regulating Christian and 
decent marriages among the negroes. And 



306 WILLIAM PENN. [1701. 

finally the territories came in with the crowning 
reason, declaring they were in a most defence- 
less condition themselves, without arms, am- 
munition, militia, or officers, and asked to be 
excused from " building forts in New York 
while they were unable to build them for their 
own home defence." 

The Assembly was dismissed after this mag- 
nificent jumble. Certainly it had earned the 
right to go home and place its several heads in 
brine. It had distinctly stated that it could not 
vote a war supply to build forts in New York 
because — 

It had just voted all the supply necessary for 
the government expenses ; 

Eighteen years of quit-rents, which they 
never had paid and were never going to pay, 
were due ; 

They had religious scruples against building 
forts ; and 

They were going to build some for themselves 
as soon as they were able. 

When the Ancient Free and Accepted As- 
sembly of Pennsylvania sat down and harnessed 
its massive intellect to the mental task of evolv- 
ing a few consecutive reasons why it shouldn't 



Ml. 57.] SUNDRY AND DIVERSE REASONS. 30/ 

spend any more money than it had to, the result 
was an intellectual three-decker with an iron 
ram and an Ericsson turret, that made the effete 
monarchies of Europe tremble on their crum- 
bling thrones, while the prophetic aureole 
about the dome of Independence Hall glowed 
like an Alpine sunset on the Wissahickon. 



CHAPTER XVIIL 

GOVERNING AT LONG RANGE. 

A S he had now been in the province nearly 
•^ *■ two years, it was about time for the Gov- 
ernor to go back to England. He seemed to 
like Pennsylvania more the less he saw of it, 
and wasted very little of his precious time in 
his " model state.*' Various reasons urged his 
return to England at this time. There was in 
the mother-country a strong party in favor of 
extinguishing the proprietary governments, and 
vesting the rule of the colonies in the Crown, 
and a bill to that effect had already been intro- 
duced in the House of Lords. It was thought 
best by the leading men of the colony that 
Penn should at once set sail for England. 
They appeared anxious to have him go, pos- 
sibly realizing the fact that they had their own 
way more fully when the Governor was three 
months out of reach — a view of the case that 
seems to have missed the Governor entirely. 



JEt. 57.] TII£ WOMAN DID IT, 3^9 

In addition to these political reasons, there 
were others equally weighty. Mrs. Penn and 
Miss Penn were both averse to remaining in 
America. They had enjoyed the novelty of a 
visit in the new country, and did not appear to 
care for any more of it, failing to enter into the 
Governor's enthusiasm for taming the Indians 
and building a model state, and making the 
wilderness to blossom as the rose. Penn him- 
self writes, at this time : " I cannot prevail on 
my wife to stay, and still less with Tishe 
[Letitia]. I know not what to do. Samuel 
Carpenter seems to excuse her in it, but to all 
that speak of it, say I shall have no need to 
stay in England, and a great interest to re- 
turn." And when a man's wife and daughter 
both put down their feet and say they will not 
stay in this horrid country another minute, 
and they will go back to England to-morrow if 
they have to walk every blessed step of the 
way, and, to make it worse, Samuel Carpenter, 
who might have been in better business, comes 
along and aids, abets, and encourages the wo- 
men in their distracting opposition to the Gov- 
ernor's wishes, — it is easy to see the Governor 
must surrender, and place three months of 



3IO WILLIAM PENN. [1701. 

ocean between him and the province that con- 
stantly required his presence. Or rather, he 
required the presence of the province, if he 
wanted to hold it and mould it to his own will. 
The province got along in its own way while 
the Governor was in London, but it wasn't 
Penn's way at all. Penn's own wishes would 
have held him in America, for he writes, '' My 
inclinations run strongly to a country and pro- 
prietary life." And then he packed up and 
went straight to London. But he assured the 
Assembly in his opening speech that '' no un- 
kindness or disappointment shall ever alter my 
love for the country, and resolution to return 
and settle my family and posterity in it." 

Before he sailed, the new Assembly was con- 
vened, and the Governor told them to review 
their laws, enact such new ones as they thought 
best, and consider the King's request for the 
New York forts appropriation, referred from 
the last Assembly. In reply to which the As- 
sembly promptly refused to build one solitary 
embrasure, not a lunette, not even a rifle-pit; it 
would not vote one shilling for a fort. 

But it would and did trouble the Governor 
with a long address of twenty-one articles, in 



iEt. 57.] STAND AND DELIVER. 3II 

which the Assembly and citizens asked for some 
things the proprietary was wiUing to grant, 
some that he granted unwillingly, and some that 
he wouldn't listen to. Among other things, the 
modest freemen merely asked that the Gov- 
ernor should fix the price of all his unsold land 
at the extravagant rate of " one bushel of wheat 
in the hundred." The Assembly must have had 
this request stored away in the ice-house all 
summer. When any other man held his land a 
few years he was entitled to sell it at the 
*' raise," but the price of the Governor's land 
was to be immutably fixed. Even at this dis- 
tance, this request still retains a shuddering 
sensation of frostiness, when we remember that 
Penn bought all his land of King Charles, and 
then of numerous Indians in rapid succession. 

Then the colonists had one more little favor 
to ask. It wasn't much, and they disliked to 
bother him about such a trifle, but would the 
Governor be good enough to lay out all his 
bay-marshes and swamp-lands as common 
lands ? The Governor's hair began to stand on 
end. 

Oh yes, and one thing more : they wanted 
the common use of some vacant land in the city 



312 WILLIAM PENN. [1701. 

of Philadelphia, and the free use of the river- 
bank at the ends of the streets on the Delaware 
and Schuylkill; and, by the way, they wanted 
all of his islands near the city to be reserved 
free to them for their supplies of winter fodder. 
Penn gave them the vacant lots and the river- 
fronts, but he held on to the bay-marshes and 
the islands. 

Was there any other business before the 
House ? They could not think of anything else 
of importance. Oh, the appropriation for his 
journey to England ? Well, that was all right ; 
they weren't going to make any. If he wanted 
to go to England, he was at liberty to go. It 
was the privilege of any citizen. But he could 
pay his own way or hoof it, the Assembly didn't 
very much care which. Or, he might stay in 
Pennsylvania. It was a good country, and 
they were going to stay themselves. They 
were glad enough to get away from England, 
and they had no desire to go back to a country 
where they spelled apple with an *' h." If he 
wanted money, he could sell land. 

And that is just what he had to do. He had 
five or six hundred thousand or million acres 
of land, — he didn't know which it was, — and he 



^t. 57.] POLITICAL STRANGERS. 313 

sold a few counties to pay his way back to 
England. To this sad state of penniless desti- 
tution was the once wealthy Governor and pro- 
prietor of Pennsylvania reduced. Ah, how 
few of us, blessed with comfortable homes and 
a good salary of $850 a year, know of the pen- 
ury and woe and pinching poverty and white- 
faced want stalking like grim spectres through 
the palaces of our Governors ! Let us, while 
we pity the griping poverty of the starving 
owners of whole reservations of land, learn 
wisely the lessons of their misfortunes ; let us 
lay our several hands upon our respective 
hearts, and solemnly declare we will never bite 
off more than we can chew.* 

Penn was greatly displeased with the excel- 
lent appetite this Assembly displayed for his 
lands, and in a conference on this subject he 
told them very plainly that " he would never 
permit an Assembly to meddle with his pro- 
perty, lest it should be drawn into a prece- 
dent." And that was just what the Assembly 
was after. Penn saw about as little of his own 
province as any man in England ; his successor 

^' Properly "chaw," but the proof-reader played it mean on 
the author. 



314 WILLIAM PENN. [1701. 

might be an unscrupulous, grasping man, also 
living in London and holding at exorbitant 
prices his inherited lands and privileges, and 
the Assembly, wiser in its day and generation 
than the Governor, was anxious to secure these 
lands and privileges to the people and immi- 
grants of future generations while it could be 
done. It is true there was an element of calm 
iciness in the Assembly's demands, but, after 
all, it was singing on the right key. 

Some time during the session a bill was intro- 
duced to confirm the revenue laws passed at 
New Castle, and, as might have been expected, 
every member from the territories was on his 
feet in a minute, declaring that such a bill in- 
timated that laws enacted in the territories were 
invalid. They would be recreant. Sir, to their 
principles, and false. Sir, to their constituents, 
Sir, if, Sir, they remained supinely. Sir, in their 
seats. Sir, when this galling insult. Sir, was 
hurled at the grand old constituency, Sir, it was 
their honor and privilege, Sir, to represent. Sir. 
And then they said they would and did boldly 
and fearlessly fling back the infamous insinua- 
tion into the teeth, Sir, of the cowardly insinua- 
tors ; they would beard this lion of tyrannical 



JEt. S7'] ANOTHER NEW CHARTER. 315 

and arbitrary despotism in the bud ; they would 
trample this gathering cloud of usurpation un- 
der their feet, and in the might and majesty of 
a downtrodden people they would hurl the 
proud invader from his gory seat and plant the 
flag of freedom there ! (Loud cheers and cries 
of ''Go on!" from the galleries, which were 
promptly checked by the Speaker.) And with 
this burst of legislative eloquence and grammar 
the representatives from the territories put on 
their hats, and seceded. 

Penn interposed in behalf of union and har- 
mony, and after repeated conferences the terri- 
tory members agreed to come back on condition 
''that nothing might be carried over their heads 
by outvoting them." You see, the territories 
did not want very much, but what they did want 
they wanted hke everything. At last, on the 
promise of the Governor that a clause should be 
inserted in the charter providing for their sep- 
aration in three years, the seceders returned to 
the House. 

This Assembly adopted a new constitution, 
passed one hundred bills, and adjourned on the 
28th of October. The day following, Penn pre- 
sented the inhabitants of Philadelphia an act of 



3l6 WILLIAM PENN. [1701. 

incorporation for the city, appointing Edward 
Shippen Mayor and Thomas Story Recorder, 
and placing other friends approved by himself 
in office, so that the machine might start off in 
the best shape, and leave as little work as possi- 
ble for the "Committee of One Hundred," 
which before long began to exhibit signs of an 
eager desire to stick its shovel into the muni- 
cipal sand and have something to say about 
electing the city officers itself. 

The Indians came in great numbers to bid 
Penn good-by, as it had been noised abroad 
he was going to return to England, and it was 
quite generally understood that liberal quanti- 
ties of backsheesh would be dispensed, after 
Penn's usual manner. The heart-breaking sor- 
row of these simple-minded children of the 
forest at Penn's departure has often been justly 
and feelingly portrayed. Penn had been a 
friend to the Indians."^ He was the first white 
man to treat them honestly. He was also the 
last. They had sold him the same piece of land 



* This remarkable and somewhat startling statement has 
been made by other authorities. Clarkson, Janney, Dixon, 
the Logan MSS., the memoirs of the Penn. Hist. Soc, the 
Proprietary Papers, and various MSS. have asserted it, and 
even Wf^por? a^lmits it. 



^t. 57.] GOOD-BY TO ON AS. 317 

many times, and they now wept to think they 
might never be able to sell him that old Iroquois 
timber-claim again. They wished they had sold 
it oftener while they were at it. 

In the dim gloaming of the misty future, other 
Governors would come who would buy their 
lands with bayonets ; who would fence them on 
a reservation of sage-brush and alkali ponds, 
and then abuse them because they didn't kill 
deer and buffalo on a reservation where a coy- 
ote would starve to death in ten minutes. True, 
they had never seen very much of Penn. He 
loved them, but he had spent only four or five 
years in their country in all his life. Whenever 
they did vSee him, however, they scooped him. 
They struck him rich every time they made a 
deal with him in land, and they gloomily 
thought of the day when another Governor 
should arise, and Edward Marshall would walk 
clear around the whole State of Pennsylvania 
in a day and a half. Their eyes were dim when 
for the last time in this world they looked upon 
the noble Quaker, and when they said good- 
by,* and turned to their humble lodges in the 

* They didn't say " good-by" exactly. They said " Won- 
nikiquinochisackvvissahiconkessett Connekhocheaque," which 
means the same thing. 



3l8 WILLIAM PENN. [1701. 

wilderness, sorrow gat hold upon them with 
the heart-breaking grip of a tight boot in 
church. 

Penn's last official acts in Philadelphia were 
to appoint James Logan his agent and An- 
drew Hamilton Deputy Governor, and then, 
on the 30th of October, his delighted family 
hurried on board. The Governor sorrow- 
fully said good-by to his friends and quit- 
rents. With a fair wind and a good tide the 
ship dropped down the river; the faces on the 
wharf grew indistinct and blurred;^ the ''thou- 
sand finisht houses" of Philadelphia blended 
into the autumnal fohage of the surrounding 
forests, and the hazy atmosphere of October 
fell like a veil over the bright hopes and fair 
dreams of human liberty that had been laid in 
the grand foundations of the mighty state yet 
to be builded thereon in honor and honesty 
by the hands of a free people ; the blue lines 
of the hills, the winding river, and the little 
city melted into the embracing skies, and the 
fair province of Pennsylvania passed forever 
from the gaze of its Founder. Neither in life 
nor in death was it ever to receive him again. 
He loved it so much, and he saw it so little, and 



iEt. 57.] THE LAST GRAB. 3I9 

in death his body was fated to lie thousands of 
miles away from the land that most sincerely 
honors his memory — the land that hands his 
great name down to posterity in that of the 
state he founded by '' deeds of peace." 

But his loving- colonists had one more grab at 
him. When the ship reached New Castle, 
David Lloyd and Isaac Norris, executors of 
Thomas Lloyd, presented a petition, asking for 
compensation for Thomas Lloyd's nine years' ser- 
vice as president of the Council, that one thou- 
sand acres of land be given him for that amount 
taken away from him by the Maryland claim, 
and that some other lands Lloyd had bought 
should be located. Penn readily gave and 
located the land as desired, but in regard to the 
other '' compensation" said, " What I have not 
received I cannot pay. I am, above all the 
money for lands I have sold, twenty thousand 
pounds sterling out of purse upon Pennsylvania, 
and what has been given me pays not my com- 
ing and expense since come." 

From shipboard the Governor wrote his 
agent, James Logan : " Use thy utmost endeav- 
ors to receive all that is due me. Get in quit- 
rents, look carefully after all fines, forfeitures, 



320 WILLIAM PENN. [1701. 

escheats, deodands, and strays that shall belong 
to me as proprietor. Get in the taxes and 
Friends' subscriptions, and use thy utmost 
diligence in making remittances to me by bills 
of exchange, tobacco,^ or other merchandise. 
. . . Judge Guest expects a hundred pounds a 
year of me. I would make it fifty. . . . Let not 
my cousin Durant want, but supply her with 
economy." f 

The good ship Dalmahoy made a quick pas- 
sage, and after weeks of the usual marine misery, 
Penn landed in England. When he got there, 
he learned that the bill for making all the 
American provinces Crown colonies had been 
dropped, and he didn't know just what he came 
to England for. Still, this same legislation 
would probably be attempted in a succeeding 
Parliament, and it was evident that Penn was 
once more going to maintain the Pennsylvania 
executive mansion in London, for another in- 
definite period. 

James died an exile. Three months before 



* He didn't like people to smoke it, but he would sell it. 

f Economy was a very necessary article in every household. 
Supplied with plenty of economy, cousin Durant would be 
happy as a king. 



JEt. 57.] VOC/ATG WILLIAM COMES OVER. 32 1 

Peiin's return to England, his royal son-in-law 
was gathered to his fathers, if not to his father- 
in-law, and Anne, the daughter of James, reigned 
in WiUiam's stead. One of the first places we 
hear of Penn, after he reached England, is at 
court, as usual, where he was once more in 
favor. Penn lived with his family in Kensing- 
ton, kept out of politics, wrote another volume 
of maxims for the guidance of other people, and 
a few pamphlets and a preface or two, and wor- 
ried over the news from iVmerica, which con- 
tinued to be of a most discouraging nature. 
The territories had seceded. Deputy Governor 
Hamilton died in 1703, and the new Assembly 
quarrelled with Edward Shippen, who succeeded 
him ; and when the Governor and Council pro- 
posed to confer with the House as to the time 
for holding the next session, the Assembly 
showed them all about that by simply and 
promptly adjourning to the ist of May, with- 
out troubling the Governor and his Council for 
any opinion or voice in the matter. Year after 
year the Assembly grew more and more inde- 
pendent, and it never had cared very much for 
a Deputy Governor anyhow. 

Young William Penn was now sent out to 



322 IVILLTAM PENN. [1702. 

Pennsylvania, not indeed with any hope of his 
improving the province, but for the purpose of 
reforming the young man. His father begged 
Logan, in touching terms, to look after the 
youth. '' Possess him ; go with him to Penns- 
bury, contract and recommend his acquaint- 
ance. No rambling to New York." Penn 
knew that if ever the young man got into the 
habit of going to New York, all hope of refor- 
mation was at an end. " He has wit," adds the 
father, ''kept the top company, and must be 
handled with much love and wisdom. And get 
Samuel Carpenter " — that was the useful per- 
son who '' excused " * Mrs. Penn in insisting on 
returning to England — '' Edward Shippen, Isaac 
Norris, Phineas Pemberton, Thomas Masters, 
and such persons to be soft, and kind, and teach- 
ing." " He is sharp enough to get to spend." 
"• All this keep to thyself," adds Penn, and 
Logan accordingly, after the usual manner of 
treating private and confidential correspond- 

* Heaven only knows, however, what "excused" may or 
may not have meant in those days. Perhaps this wronged 
Samuel Carpenter sat up nights to persuade Mrs. Penn to re- 
consider her determination and remain in America. " Ex- 
cused " may have meant "opposed, persecuted, condemned, 
opposed with violence," or something of that sort. 



iEt. 58.] A BOLD, BAD BOY. 323 

ence, had the letter placed in the archives of 
the American Philosophical Society, where the 
reporters could have access to it. " There 
now," said Logan, " that letter is safe." 

*' Pennsylvania has cost me dearer in my poor 
child," said Penn, "than all other considera- 
tions," which, considering- that the poor child 
learned all his deviltry in London, is rather 
severe on Pennsylvania. And then, with his 
singular weakness for doing, or endeavoring to 
do, the most important things at the longest 
range, he sent this son away from home and its 
restraining influences^ away from himself, away 
over into a new world, and among strangers, to 
reform him. The young man came over with 
John Evans, the newly appointed Deputy Gov- 
ernor, a youth of twenty-six years, who was 
recommended by Penn as a '' sober and sensible 
young man," who would be " discreet and ad- 
visable, especially by the best of our friends." 

But the Governor was most dreadfully taken 
in on young Evans, and the two young men 
made Rome howl when they had been long 
enough in the province to get acquainted a 
little. By this time, only about one third of 
the population of Philadelphia were members 



324 WILLIAM PENN. [1703. 

of the Society of Friends, and these youths had 
no trouble in finding plenty of convivial society. 
They tarried long at the wine; they sang ''In 
the morning by the bright light" on the streets, 
with great vigor but a little out of tune ; they 
bought the police ; and, secure by the dignity of 
their positions, the Deputy Governor and the 
son of the proprietor made the morals of the 
city worse than any other two men could have 
done, because their boon companions found im- 
munity from arrest in the company of the 
Deputy Governor. 

Young Penn was elected a member of the 
Provincial Council, but as it met in the day- 
time, he was seldom able to attend ; a deputa- 
tion of " one hundred Indians, nine of whom 
were kings," called upon him, to pay their re- 
spects to the son of Onas and gather in a bale 
of presents ; but even this cataract of royalty 
failed to mend the young man's waj^s. In open 
opposition to the tenets of his sect, he joined 
the war party and organized a body of those 
fell destroyers of cakes and ale known as 
militia in Philadelphia. He sold WiUiamstadt,* 



Now Norristovvn township, Montgomery County, Pa. 



iEt. 6o.] THE FREE FIGHT AT STORY'S. 325 

the beautiful manor of eight thousand acres 
given him by his indulgent father, because 
Logan could not supply him with money fast 
enough. He was a prodigal son in every re- 
spect save the last chapter. 

Finally this riotous conduct culminated in a 
free fight one night at Enoch Story's tavern. 
Deputy Governor Evans, Sheriff John Finney, 
Joseph Ralph, and Thomas Gray the scrivener, 
— a reporter, maybe, — and young Penn pounded 
a watchman or two, but the guardians of the 
peace were re-enforced by *Hhe Mayor, Re- 
corder, and one Alderman ;" the Hghts were 
put out, and Alderman Wilcox pounded the 
ground with Deputy Governor Evans, not 
knowing who he was, and when the unhappy 
executive disclosed his identity and dignity the 
indignant Alderman leaped upon him and 
whipped him again for lying to him. And in 
the mean time somebody else was wiping up 
the floor with young William Penn. 

The Deputy Governor felt greatly chagrined 
over this affair, especially about the right eye 
and the end of his nose ; and young Penn, after 
being presented by the grand jury, shortly after 
returned to England. His father would have 



326 WILLIAM PENN. [1704. 

been less than a man had he not felt hurt at 
what he considered the harshness with which 
his son had been treated. " Bad Friends' treat- 
ment of him," said the father, "stumbled him 
from the truth. I justify not his folly, and still 
less their provocation." Logan says the present- 
ment was " an indignity put upon the son of the 
Founder, which is looked upon by most mode- 
rate men as very base." But then, it must be 
remembered, the people of Pennsylvania never 
saw enough of the Founder to get very well ac- 
quainted with him, and the son of some man 
away over in London was a person of very 
little consequence to a great many of the colo- 
nists, especially the Dutch and Swedes. 

Troubles never come single."^ If they had 
been content to come only in pairs or triplets, 
Penn would have been a happier man, but they 
began to rain upon him now. His daughter 
Letitia married WiUiam Aubrey, who appears to 
have been a cannibal and desired to live on his 
father-in-law. He clamored for the payment of 
his wife's portion much faster than Penn could 
pay it, and Logan describes him as " one of the 

* Original thought. 



JEt. 62.J TI/E FALSE ALARM. 327 

keenest men living." Young William's credi- 
tors were also pressing the Governor. *' Both 
son and daughter clamor," said Penn, " she to 
quiet him that is a scraping man and will count 
interest for a guinea ;" young William had en- 
tirely renounced the Society of Friends, ran for 
Parliament and got left, and wanted to enter 
the army. 

In the province Evans was vainly endeavoring 
to re-unite the territories and the province, and 
as vainly trying to get the Assembly to vote a 
supply for the Government and pay up their 
quit-rents, the Assembly being convinced that 
the ;^2,ooo they had voted some years before 
would, if it were ever collected, run the prov- 
ince for fifty years. As to the quit-rents, they 
said, they were reserved for the support of the 
Government, — which was probably intended for 
a joke. There was very little money in Penn- 
sylvania at that time, and had the Assembly de- 
sired to vote a revenue, it could hardly have 
been collected. 

Governor Evans had William Biles impris- 
oned for calling him a boy, and saying "they 
would kick him out, because he was not fit to 
govern them." He was making strong efforts 



328 WILLIAM PENN. [1706. 

to organize a militia, and, to test the sense of 
the people, he one day caused a report to be 
circulated that the French were coming up the 
river, and then rushing into the street, sword in 
hand, Evans called upon the people to arm and 
follow him. Instead of following him, however, 
the population broke for the woods, by a large 
majority. This disheartening indication that 
the martial spirit was either dead or in a rapid 
decline was very discouraging to the Deput3{ 
Governor. However, he succeeded in persuad- 
ing the territories to build a fort at New Castle, 
at which the ships reported or which they ran 
by, as they saw fit. The Assembly drew up 
articles of impeachment against Logan, Evans's 
secretary, and finally addressed the proprietary 
such a letter of remonstrance, in which were set 
forth all the follies and evils of Evans's adminis- 
tration, that Penn recalled him and he left the 
province in 1708. 

Among other very wise and useful maxims 
that he wrote for the guidance and instruction 
of other people, William Penn, after due de- 
liberation and the usual period of incubation, 
evolved the following nugget of solid wisdom : 
" A man may be defrauded in many ways by a 



MX.. 63.] PENN'S CONFIDENTIAL STEWARD. 329 

servant ; as in care, pains, money, trust." And 
about this time he began to understand how 
that might be himself. 

Philip Ford was Penn's confidential man ; his 
steward. That is, he had been. At this time 
he was dead, and had probably gone where the 
other rich man went, and was spending all his 
time prospecting for water, with never an in- 
dication, or a show of color. He was, in his 
life-time, a member of the Society of Friends, 
an eminently respectable man, though not so 
good a man as John Evans. Penn liked him, 
for some inscrutable reason, placed all con- 
fidence in him, gave him full charge of all his 
affairs, never looked into his accounts, and in 
every way treated him as though he were 
cashier of a bank and Penn were only presi- 
dent. When Ford wanted any papers signed, 
he simply told any lie about them that hap^ 
pened to come handy, and William Penn said, 
" Oh, never mind. Friend Ford, anything thee 
does is O. K," and blandly signed them. 

The result of all this easy book-keeping was 
just what any ordinary business-man would 
have known it would be ; in a few years the 
servant had so much more money than the mas- 



330 WILLIAM PENN. [1707. 

ter, that when Penn wanted to come to Amer- 
ica the second time he was a little short, and 
PhiHp Ford said he could let him have ;^2,8oo. 
As a mere matter of form, however, not that 
it was really necessary between them as man 
and man, you understand, but to give the affair 
a business-like finish, you know, if he would 
just make a kind of deed of the province to 
Ford, as a sort of security like ? 

" Why, certainly," Penn said, and signed the 
deed. 

*' It is really a deed," said the steward, *'but 
we will consider it just a mortgage." 

*' Oh yes," said this singularly easy-going 
Governor, ''we'll play it is a mortgage.*' And 
lie went on his way, repeating to himself the 
followmg selections from his excellent maxims: 

" An able bad man is an ill instrument, and 
to be shunned as the plague. 

'' Be not deceived with the first appearance 
of things, but give thyself time to be in the 
right. 

"It is ill mistaking where the matter is of 
importance. 

" It is not enough that a thing be right, if it 
be not fit to be done. If not prudent, though 



^t. 63.] SHUTTING DOWN ON HIM. 33 1 

just, it is not advisable. He that loses by 
getting had better lose than get." 

Ford continued in favor and confidence and 
full fellowship, receiving and disbursing mo- 
neys, charging compound interest every six 
months at eight per cent in all his advances, and 
Penn continued to know nothing about it all, 
until the rascally old steward died and went 
as hereinbefore-mentioned. Then his son, who 
was worse than his father, and widow Ford, 
who was worse than her son, returned from the 
funeral and came down upon the astonished 
Governor with this conveyance of the prov- 
ince in one hand and a bill for i^ 14,000, or 
;^ 1 2,000, or ;^ 10, 500, as the case may be, de- 
pending upon which authority you accept. 
Penn didn't have that amount right in his 
clothes, and asked for an itemized bill, by 
which it appeared that his steward, by his own 
accounts, had received on behalf of Penn 
;^ 1 7,859, and paid out ;^ 1,659, but still, so deftly 
were those papers manipulated, they brought 
Penn more than ;^ 10, 500 in his steward's debt. 
It was the interest that ran it up so. The 
Fords had charged interest both on their ad- 
vances and on Penn's payments, then they 



332 WILLIAM PENN. [1707. 

added both interest accounts together, com- 
pounded it, and deducting the amount from the 
payment, added it to their original advance, 
and then computed interest on it from that 
date. So that every time Penn made a pay- 
ment of ;^300 it cost him ^^450 to make it good, 
and it would have been money in his pocket to 
have stayed out altogether and made no pay- 
ments. It requires a man of broad compre- 
hension, profound judgment, liberal education, 
and a quick intuition to comprehend the mys- 
teries of scientific book-keeping. 

Penn, by the assistance of two experts, man- 
aged to cut the claim down to ^4,303, which he 
offered to pay, but the Fords demanded their 
pound of flesh, and the case went into court. 
The special case of debt, the original i^2,ooo, 
was affirmed, the sum amounting with costs to 
about ^3,000, and on the loth of February Gov- 
ernor William Penn was arrested by a member 
of his own Society of Friends, at Grace Street 
Church. Acting on legal advice, Penn went 
into Fleet Street Prison, and so he got around 
to where he started. Thirty-seven years be- 
fore, a file of soldiers arrested him while he was 
preaching at this very church, and dragged 



JEt. 64.] SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION. 333 

him away to prison. And now it was a Qua- 
ker who, disregarding his standing in the 
Society of which they were both members, with 
no respect for his high station in the world, 
with no reverence for his gray hairs, with no 
more claim of right or justice than the soldiers 
of Charles were armed with, arrested the old 
man at a Quaker meeting-house, and forced 
him to prison. This world is made up mainly 
of men and women, and people are very much 
like people after all. 

Penn lay in prison about nine months, when 
the Fords began to talk of a compromise. The 
proprietary then mortgaged the province once 
more, having derived so much profit and pleas- 
ure from the first mortgage, and raised ;^6,8oo. 
The Fords were paid ;^7,5oo, and Penn left the 
prison and went to his home in Brentford, 
having had abundant leisure, during his prison 
fife, to amass material for one more maxim, 
*'You can't most always tell anything about 
nobody." 



CHAPTER XIX. 

AT REST. 

pOLONEL GOOKIN, the new Deputy Gov- 
^ ernor, arrived in Pennsylvania about five 
o'clock on the evening of March 17th, and was 
knee-deep in the usual wrangle with the As- 
sembly at seven o'clock on the morning of the 
1 8th. The quarrel should and would have 
begun the evening before he got there, had the 
two parties known where to find each other. 
The Assembly reflected upon the Council, 
made direct charges against Logan, the Secre- 
tary, abused Evans roundly, refused to furnish 
the Queen the hundred and fifty soldiers she 
demanded, and only offered to vote money 
under conditions that were resented by the 
Governor as mean and discourteous, and gener- 
ally trod on everybody's corns that were with- 
in reach of the legislative heel. 

The next Assembly, chosen in October of 
this same year, was a little worse than its pre- 
decessor; the same old party was successful. 



iEt. 65.] THE EXPOSTULATORY LETTER. 335 

and David Lloyd was again elected Speaker. 
Logan came to England, received a triumphant 
acquittal at the hands of both Friends and civil 
authorities, — somewhat remote from the loca- 
tion of the charges, it is true, but he was ac- 
quitted, none the less, — and while there he told 
Penn all this pleasant njsws about the model 
state. 

Sixty-five 3^ears and much trouble were be- 
ginning to tell on the rugged frame of the 
Founder, but he could not give up the " Holy 
Experiment" without one more effort to restore 
to its councils the harmony and fraternal confi- 
dence with which it had been planted. He 
wrote his factious colonists a patriarchal epistle 
from London, in which he ran over his old 
dreams and plans and present hopes for Penn- 
sylvania ; mourned that it had been to him but 
a source of '' grief, trouble, and poverty ;" de- 
clared his readiness to grant them anything 
that *' would make you happier in the relations 
between us ;" reminded them that already they 
had made three constitutions with no opposi- 
tion from him ; protested against the As- 
sembly's assuming to meet and adjourn when 
it will as prejudicial to good order ; and told 



33^ WILLIAM PENN, ■ [1709= 

them " nothing could be more destructive than 
to take so much of the provision and executive 
part of the Government out of the Gov- 
ernor's hands and lodge it in an uncertain col- 
lective body," and that he did not think it 
'' prudent in the people to crave these powers." 
Alas, poor Penn! Before many years the 
people in the American colonies were craving 
a great many powers that their non-resident 
Governors did not think it "■ prudent" for them 
to have. The Founder complained that he 
''had but too sorrowful a view and sight to 
complain of the manner in which he had been 
treated;" that "my quit-rents, never sold by 
me," had been turned to the support of the 
Government, his overplus land claimed ; his 
secretary persecuted on account of the Gov- 
ernor ; that Penn himself and his '' suffering 
family" had " been reduced to hardships;" he 
asked them to " consider the regard due to 
him that had not been paid," and with much 
gentle and touching expostulation, and earnest 
prayers for the blessings of " peace, love, and 
industry" upon " our poor country," he sub- 
scribes himself " your real friend as well as just 
proprietor and Governor." 



^t. 66.] PENN TRIUMPHANTLY SUSTAINED. 33/ 

This expostulatory epistle touched the right 
spot. The State Central Committee made a 
campaign document of it and franked it all over 
the state ; the Friends turned out on election- 
day and stayed all day at the polls and worked 
like beavers, with the exception of the gaudy 
and frivolous worldly mill-privileges enjoyed 
and employed by beavers, and in the election 
for the Assembly of 1710 the Founder was 
vindicated, Pennsylvania was saved, the gray 
light of victory shone on the upturned faces of 
the vanguard, reform was triumphant, calumny 
and aspersion fled away in the black night of 
a nation's rebuke, and the traitorous hand that 
lifted its envenomed tongue to stab the heart 
of the state hid its grovelling head in the dust 
of defeat, while the black night of arnica that 
threatened to overwhelm our glorious ship of 
state was trampled under the indignant feet of 
the godlike voice of the people. David Lloyd 
was kicked higher than Gilderoy's celebrated 
kite, not one of the old Assembly was reelected, 
the Committee of One Hundred did not go home 
till morning, and Isaac Norris got off a joke.^ 

* It was about "astral influences," a very mild-mannered 



338 WILLIAM PENN. [1710. 

Good-will and general concord now reigned 
in the councils of Pennsylvania. The new As- 
sembly, when the Queen made a requisition on 
the province for war supplies, passed a bill 
appropriating ";^2,ooo for the Queen's use." 
" We did not see it inconsistent with our prin- 
ciples," gravely explains one of the members, 
** to give the Queen money, the use to which 
she put it being her affair, not ours." But 
they wouldn't vote a dollar of war supplies. 
And thus his satanic majesty was larrupped 
around the shrubbery even as a calico horse 
around the circus-ring. As the province voted 
no war supplies, the Queen bought a ship-load 
of powder and muskets and paid off two regi- 
ments of soldiers * with the money, nobody's 
conscience was disturbed, and everybody was 
happy. 

As if to crown this year of good things with 
fatness, word reached Penn that a silver-mine 
had been discovered in his province, near 
Conestoga. The news was brought to the 



joke, which is carefully labelled and explained as "a piece of 
pleasantry" by his biographer. 

* The pay of the British soldier was sixteen cents a year and 
find himself. 



^t. 67] AN- INDIAN SILVER-MINE. 339 

Council by an Indian. Neither the Council 
nor Penn had yet learned how difficult it is for 
any but an expert to distinguish a full-grown 
Indian from an able-bodied liar, and these 
innocent men believed him. The Governor 
had an eye like a hawk for anything that 
looked like money, and the next mail carried 
letters of instruction to his secretary to look 
into this silver-mine, hire an expert to go out 
to it, and see whether it assayed half so much 
ore as it did ten times as much assessments. 

There was no silver-mine. The Indian liar, 
asking the Council to excuse him while he went 
out and laughed, went back into the trackless 
forest with one eye closed and his aboriginal 
tongue thrust far into the recesses of his dusky 
cheek, while ever and anon he smote with open 
palm his sinewy thigh and carolled his wild 
laughter to the rustling oaks. Thus upon the 
invading race of pale-faced men he had played 
his unusual joke with his accustomed Indian- 
nuity.* It may have been that with prophetic 
eye the savage looked up Chestnut Street and 

* Joke of 171 1. No extra charge. For particulars, see 
MSS. now on file in the stumpage bureau of the Interior De- 
partment. 



340 WILLIAM PENM. [171 1. 

saw the Keystone National Bank and the 
United States Mint, but those inexhaustible 
mines, though located in his own province, 
William Penn had never a chance to work. 
His paper wasn't sufficiently gilt-edged for the 
one, and his bullion was too prior for the 
other. 

His final chapter of literary work was written 
this year, a preface to John Banks's Journal, and 
it indicates no mental weakness, no approach of 
the decay of that intellectual vigor that had 
marked all his writings, no shadow of the cloud 
that was soon to darken the clear mind. On 
the whole, the evening was gathering about 
him pleasantly. There was peace in his beloved 
province, and if the silver-mine did not pan out, 
there was an ocean of petroleum, and had the 
colonists only had Colonel Drake for a Gov- 
ernor, the Standard Oil Company would have 
owned all western Pennsylvania before the 
Revolution. 

The Assembly of 171 1 passed a law prohibit- 
ing the importation of any more slaves, and 
although, in reply to William Southbe's petition 
for a law declaring the freedom of all negroes, 
the Assembly in 1712 resolved "it is neither 



JEt. 68.] THE WEIGHT OF YEARS. 34I 

just nor convenient to set them at liberty," still 
the leaven of abolitionism was working. It is 
interesting to note that the act of 171 1 was 
promptly cancelled by the Crown as soon as it 
reached England, for the mother-country was 
in the slave-trade then with great profit and 
eagerness. Parliament was doing all it could to 
promote the inhuman traffic ; in some instances 
—notably in Pennsylvania— it was fairly forced 
upon the colonies, and not until the days of '^6 
did freedom come to the negro even in the 
Northern States. 

For several years Penn had been negotiating 
with the home government for the sale of his 
province to the Crown. His province was 
decorated with that clinging symbol of fidelity 
and attachment known as a plain open-and-shut 
mortgage; the annual yield of quit-rents con- 
tinued to be represented by a round and sym- 
metrical O, the cares and worry of provincial 
affairs were weighing heavily upon him, and 
for his peace of mind and health of pocket it 
was perhaps better that he should sell. He 
was an old man ; he had well-nigh reached the 
limit that bounds the ordinary life-time of men ; 
affliction and cares of many kinds, anxiety for 



342 WILLIAM PENN. [17 12. 

his province and anxious sorrow for his way- 
ward boy, persecutions and prisons and sixty- 
eight years were accomplishing their perfect 
work on his mind and body. Regretfully he 
put his hand to the preliminary papers relating 
to the sale of his model state, which he finally 
agreed should pass to the Crown for ''^12,000, 
payable in four years, with certain stipulations." 
But before the deed was executed, paralysis 
checked the hand and clouded the brain of the 
Founder, and the transfer was never made ; 
William Penn died proprietor and Governor of 
Pennsylvania. 

From the second shock of paralysis which 
came upon him in Bristol, "while he was writ- 
ing a letter to Logan, so suddenly," Janney 
says, " that his hand was arrested in the begin- 
ning of a sentence which he never completed," 
he never entirely recovered. In this last letter 
by his hand, the Founder treats upon his never- 
failing theme of poverty, '' for it's my excessive 
expenses upon Pennsylvania that has sunk me 
so low, and nothing else ; my expenses yearly 
in England ever exceeding my income ;".... 
both my daughter and son Aubrey are under 
the greatest uneasiness about their money 



^t. 68.] THE PEN IS DROPPED. 343 

which I desire, as well as allow thee to return 
per first. Tis an epidemic disease on your side 
the sea to be too oblivious of returns. ... I have 
paid William Aubrey* (with a mad, bullying 
treatment from him into the bargain) but ^^500, 
which with several hundreds paid at several 
times to him here makes near ^1,100, besides 
what thou hast sold and put out to interest 
there,— which is so deep a cut to me here ;— 
and nothing but my son's tempestuous and 
most rude treatment of my wife and self too 
should have forced it to me. Therefore do not 
lessen thy care to pay me, or at least to secure 
the money on her manor of Mount Joy, for a 
plantation for me or one of my children." The 
closing sentence of the unfinished letter runs: 
" I am glad to see Sybylla Masters, who has 
just come down to the city and is with us, but 
sorry at M. Phillips's coming, without just a 
hint of it. She"— 

The pen that dropped from his hand was 
never resumed. After he recovered somewhat, 
'' by easy journeys he reached London," writes 
his wife, " and endeavored to settle some affairs 



* Letitia's husband. 



344 WILLIAM PENiW [lyjo. 

and get some laws passed for that country's 
ease and his own and family's comfort." He 
was unable, however, " to bear the fatigues of 
the town," and went to his home in Ruscombe, 
where he had resided for the past two years. 
Scarcely had he reached home, however, early 
in February, when a third time he was stricken 
with paralysis, "and though," writes Hannah 
Penn, *' through the Lord's mercy he is much 
better than he was, and in a pretty hopeful way 
of recovery, yet I am forbid by his doctors to 
trouble him with any business until better." 

She never troubled him with business again, 
but took his case into her own hands with true 
wifely devotion. Six years Penn lived after 
his third attack, and the closing scenes of his 
life were '' sweet, comfortable, and easy ;" his 
wife kept '' the thoughts of business from him ;" 
his bodily health continued good ; he took great 
pleasure in the presence of the children of his 
wayward son William, whose neglected wife 
and family were at Ruscombe ; but his memory 
failed, his mind was darkened, and so, delight- 
ing himself in the great house at Ruscombe. 
" walking and taking the air when the weather 
allowed, and at other times diverting himself 



^t. 74.] IN THE JORDANS CHURCHYARD. 3 |5 

from room to room," he walked in childish 
pleasures and his own native innocence down 
the easy decline of his pilgrimage, until he 
reached the resting-place at the foot of the 
hill on the 30th ol July, 171 8, in the seventy- 
fifth year of a life that had crowned its little 
faults with great virtues. 

They buried him in the Friends graveyard at 
Jordans, in Buckinghamshire, by the side of his 
well-beloved Gulielma. Only two miles away 
from Jordans, on one side, is Beaconsfield ; about 
as far in the other direction is Chalfont St. Giles, 
where first he met Guli Springett, nearly half a 
century before. Only six miles away is Rick- 
mansworth, where he took Guli to spend her 
honeymoon. Only eight miles away is the old 
village of Penn, which is said to have taken its 
name from Penn's ancestors and where the only 
Penn born in America, John, is buried. It is a 
quiet resting-place. The plain tiled meeting- 
house with its old-fashioned lattice windows ; 
the three-roomed cottage, where the women 
still hold their business meetings ; the roomy 
stabling covered by the extended roof of the 
mesting-house ; and, close by, the little oblong 
burial-ground, are all shut in by leafy limes and 



34^ WILLIAM PENN. [1718. 

beeches, and beyond the woods the pleasant 
meadows stretch away in lonely restfulness; 
only a single house can be seen in any direction 
from Jordans. Here lies Thomas Ellwood, Guli 
Springett's first lover, who loved her so dearly 
he dared not speak of it, fearing the blow of a 
rejection ; but he was ever a warm and faithful 
friend to her and her husband. Here Penn's 
wives are buried ; here sleep their children, 
Springett, the first-born, and Letitia ; here rest 
the Penningtons, Guli's step-father and mother ; 
here is buried Ellwood's wife ; and somewhere 
in this little burial-ground WiUiam Penn is 
sleeping. 

Just exactly where, nobody knows. Only a 
vShort time since, the people of Pennsylvania 
thought an agreeable and eminently proper 
feature in the bicentenary celebration of the 
founding of the model state, which will occur 
in October, 1882, would be the removal of the 
remains of the Founder from England to the 
state he founded. The report of this intention 
reached Jordans about June, just the time of 
holding the regular Yearly Meeting, and a feel- 
ing was produced which was something akin to 
excitement. The Friends in the Chalfont valleys 



Mt. 74. j POSTHUMOUS REVERENCE. 347 

suddenly remembered how dear William Penn 
was to them, and this feeling spread like a con- 
tagion through all England. Everybody in 
England loved William Penn, and dearly and 
tenderly did they revere his memory, and lov- 
ingly would they guard, even as the apples of 
their eyes, his sacred bones. True, their fathers 
had oftentimes plunged those sacred bones into 
filthy prisons, when the bones regarded love 
and hate a great deal more sensitively than 
they do now ; true, their most brilliant historian 
had been the only man in all the world of letters 
found willing and anxious to blacken the name 
and smirch the fair fame of William Penn, but 
no matter. Dear were his bones and sacred 
his memory, and now no prowling hand from 
Yankee-land should violate his sacred grave 
with its polluting touch. And then when they 
thought of the boundless rapacity of the Ohio 
medical student, and the hyenaic enterprise of 
the man who robbed the grave of Stewart, — not 
any English king of that name, but an Ameri- 
can Stewart whose grave was worth robbing, — 
they trembled, and besought the Government 
to set a trusty man-at-arms to keep a faithful 
watch and ward above the grave of Penn. 



348 WILLIAM PENN. [171 8. 

Just about that point the interest in the dis- 
cussion culminated. The Government was per- 
fectly willing that the man-at-arms should watch 
the grave of Penn, but — which grave should he 
watch ? 

That, gentle reader, was the gaul of it. No- 
body knows positively where William Penn is 
buried. He is buried somewhere in the grave- 
yard of Jordans, but that is all we know. 
Many years ago the '^ Testimony of Reading 
Friends" bore witness that '■' the field in which 
the illustrious dead repose is not even decent- 
ly smoothed. There are no gravel-walks, 
no monuments, no mournful yews, no cheerful 
flowers ; there is not even a stone to mark a 
spot or record a name." For one hundred and 
forty-four years these graves lay unmarked, and 
the first attempt to identify and mark any of 
them was made in June, 1862. And when, even 
after this attempt at identification had been 
made, and people who had visited the grave of 
William Penn were mortified to learn they had 
wept and plucked blades of grass from the rest- 
ing-place of Isaac Pennington or Mrs. EUwood, 
it was learned that the attempted identification 
that disturbed their reminiscences and ruined 



^t. 74.] IDENTIFICATION IMPOSSIBLE. 349 

their relics was untrustworthy. The trustees 
of the Jordans burial-ground, scarcely longer 
ago than a year, declined to pledge themselves 
to a precise identification of Penn's grave. For 
a century and a half the grave was unmarked. 
In all that time a rough and by no means cer- 
tain plan of the graveyard was the only clue to 
the location of any of the graves, and it is more 
than doubted whether identification is at all pos- 
sible. So, even if Pennsylvania should get the 
handful of nameless dust that reposes under the 
stone marked— for the past twenty years— with 
Penn's name, it would only be a doubtful quan- 
tity. 

And why should Pennsylvania want his bones, 
that never had his body? While his ideas were 
American, Penn was by birth and residence an 
Englishman. In the thirty-six years that he was 
proprietor and Governor of Pennsylvania, from 
1682 to 1718, he spent but four years in Amer- 
ica, and these in visits of two years each, sepa- 
rated by an interval of about sixteen years. 
And much of the want of harmony between the 
Founder and the colonists, often unjustly charged 
to the grasping spirit of the latter, was owing 
to his own continued absence. He was a 



350 WILLIAM PENN. [1718. 

stranger to his province, as the colonists were 
strangers to him. They couldn't go to England 
to get acquainted with the Founder, and he 
wouldn't, or at any rate didn't, come to America 
often enough or stay long enough to get ac- 
qainted with them. As he didn't live here, and 
of his own will chose Jordans for his last resting- 
place, there seems no reason why his remains — 
" supposing," in the language of the trustees of 
the Jordans burial-ground, ''that they did ex- 
ist" — should be disturbed. 

If the ancient Pennsylvanians were accused 
by the Founder and his friends of avarice and 
ingratitude, of grasping overmuch, and of 
"thinking it no sin," as Logan said, "to haul 
what they can from you," it must be remem- 
bered that the proprietary and the colonists 
looked at these things from very different points 
of view ; that the growing spirit of freedom 
and popular government, on even a broader 
basis of popular rights than Penn had con- 
ceived, was developing beyond his conception 
in a colony with which his actual personal con- 
nection was so shght. They would not pay his 
quit-rents, but it was on principle, not from 
niggardly meanness. And while they held back 



^t. 74.] HONORS ARE EASY, 351 

on the one hand, certainly no man ever accused 
Penn of any undue bashfulness about asking for 
money. His letters to Pennsylvania were one 
continuous song of poverty, his great financial 
losses by his provincial speculation, and urgent 
requests for supplies and quit-rents. Like the 
theme in an intricate musical transcription, 
whatever other topic his letters touched upon, 
the song of the quit-rents moaned along through 
them all like a bassoon solo with orchestral 
accompaniment. And at his death, for a man 
who had spent forty years complaining of pov- 
erty, he was able to leave his family in compara- 
tively comfortable circumstances. His estates 
in England and Ireland, bringing an income of 
;^ 1,500 a year, were left to his grandchildren — 
Guli, Springett, and William Penn — the chil- 
dren of his prodigal son.* In addition he left 
to these children and to his daughter Letitia, 
being issue of his first wife, each ten thousand 
acres of land in Pennsylvania. All the residue 

* This son William never reformed. He abandoned his 
family, went to the Continent, and continued in the prodigal 
business with eminent success until 1720, when he died of con- 
sumption, brought on by his excesses. He was very penitent 
at the last. His father never knew the saddest chapters of his 
boy's history. 



352 WILLIAM PENN. [1718 

of his Pennsjlvania lands he left to the children 
of his second wife, Hannah Penn, to be con- 
veyed to them at her discretion, after enough 
had been sold to pay his debts. All his per- 
sonal property he left to his wife Hannah. The 
will was in chancery several years, as usual ; for 
no man, even though he be a Governor and 
a wise man, can make a will that does not read 
three or four different ways; but all was eventu- 
ally left as the testator wished. John, Thomas, 
and Richard — Penn's sons by his second mar- 
riage — became proprietors of the province, and 
presently the Penn family began to reap a gold- 
en harvest from the Pennsylvania plantation. 

After the war of Independence, the Penns 
not taking a remarkably active part on the side 
of the colonies, the Pennsylvania Legislature 
passed a bill which vested in the common- 
wealth the estate of the Penn family, but re- 
served to William Penn's descendants all their 
private estates, "■ including quit-rents and arrear- 
ages of rents," — for down to the end of recorded 
time nothing will probably ever be done about 
the Penn estates in Pennsylvania into which 
the ghost of the quit-rent will not come stalk- 
ing like a financial Banquo. This same act 



iEt. 74.] THE PENNSYLVANIA HARVEST. 353 

appropriated ;^ 130,000 sterling to be paid to the 
representatives of Thomas Penn and Richard 
Penn, which was all paid within a few years 
after the bill was passed. When we bear in 
mind what was usually done with the estates of 
foreign non-residents by victorious kings at the 
close of a war in those days, one cannot complain 
that the Pennsylvanians did not remember 
gratefully and loyally the Founder of their 
state, and for his sake deal generously, justly, 
and, by the laws of war and the code of the 
time, more than justly, by his sons. And when 
it is remembered that the British Government 
allowed the heirs of Penn ;^5oo,ooo for their 
losses by the American Revolution, and that 
the original cost of the state of Pennsylvania 
was ;^ 1 6,000, and paid for by a hopeless debt at 
that, we are led to hope that the heirs of 
William Penn have outlived the alarming desti- 
tution and pinching poverty that was a burden 
on the life of their great ancestor. Pennsyl- 
vania has not been ungrateful to the Founder. 
While England persecuted him, Pennsylvania 
was an asylum for himself and his friends. 
While English laws cast him into prison, the 
laws of Pennsylvania were such as he made 



354 ' WILLIAM PENN. [1718. 

them. While an EngUsh historian sought to 
blacken his character, Penns3dvania was ever 
his stanch defender. With a generosity not 
demanded or expected by the laws of nations, 
Pennsylvania, in the day of its own poverty 
and hard-won independence, enriched the loyal- 
ist descendants of his name, while its own noble 
son, Morris, his purse drained by sacrifices for 
his state and country, died in poverty. And 
jarring differences of state policy only arose 
between Penn and the model state when the 
Founder, by his long years of absence, made 
himself a stranger to the changing opinions and 
growing ideas of the state he planted. 



CHAPTER XX. 

"THE NOBLEST WORK OF GOD." 

'T^HE honest man who was born two hundred 
■*■ and thirty-eight years ago was no better 
than the honest man born in our own fairer 
times, but he was a much greater rarity. To- 
day, good men are so common they are often 
overlooked; in those older days, a good man 
was eagerly sought for, and when the au- 
thorities found him they put him in prison 
lest he should get away entirely, and the king- 
dom be left without even a small sample of 
goodness. If he was extraordinarily good, they 
cut off his head. A good man was at a pre- 
mium, but he rarely cared to collect the pre- 
mium himself, because he had a family to sup- 
port. A man who would attract not more 
than ordinary attention to-day shone out then 
like a comet among stars. In that elder day it 
was a rare advantage with serious dravv'backs 
for a good man with a live conscience to live. 



356 WILLIAM PENN. [1718. 

He enjoyed a monopoly of the business, until 
it occurred to some bishop to make a sacred 
bonfire of him. 

It was in such an era of the world's history 
that William Penn came upon the stage of 
human affairs, and was hailed as a star before 
the curtain went down on the first act. In 
such an age, a man of character so decidedly 
marked, of convictions so conscientiously felt 
and so earnestly pronounced, could not remain 
concealed, could not walk in obscure paths. 

He had the faults of men, the weaknesses of 
humanity, because he was not a god. His 
faculty of self-interest was well developed, and 
down to old age he retained unimpaired his 
excellent voice for quit-rents. His keen ac- 
quisitiveness, his constant clamor for his quit- 
rents, and repeated and again repeated asser- 
tions of his grievous poverty, detract from the 
dignity of a character in all other respects 
n^ble and lovable, and are apt to impress one 
with pity rather than sympathy. But it is 
from his many virtues, and not from his few 
weaknesses, that we read the elevating lessons 
of his life. 

Born in stormy times, he walked amid 



^t. 74.] " THE NOBLEST WORK OF GODr 357 

troubled waters all his days. In an age of bit- 
ter persecution and unbridled wickedness, he 
never wronged his conscience. A favored 
member of a court where statesmanship was 
intrigue and trickery, where the highest mo- 
rality was corruption, and whose austerity was 
venality, he never stained his hands with a 
bribe. Living under a government at war 
with the people, and educated in a school that 
taught the doctrine of passive obedience, his 
life-long dream was of popular government, of 
a state where the people ruled. In his early 
manhood, at the bidding of conscience, against 
the advice of his nearest friends, in opposition 
to stern paternal commands, against every 
dictate of worldly wisdom and human pru- 
dence, in spite of all the dazzling temptations 
of ambition so alluring to the heart of a young 
man, he turned away from the broad, fair high- 
way to wealth, position, and distinction that the 
hands of a king opened before him, and cast- 
ing his lot with the sect weakest and most un- 
popular in England, through paths that were 
tangled with trouble and lined with pitiless 
thorns of persecution, he walked into honor 
and fame, and the reverence of the world, such 



358 WILLIAM PENN. [i^ig. 

as royalty could not promise and could not 
give him. 

In the land where he planted his model state, 
to-day no descendant bears his name. In the 
religious society for which he suffered banish- 
ment from home, persecution, and the prison, 
to-day no child of his blood and name walks in 
Christian fellowship nor stands uncovered in 
worship. His name has faded out of the living 
meetings of the Friends, out of the land that 
crowns his memory with sincerest reverence. 
Even the uncertain stone that would mark his 
grave stands doubtingly among the kindred 
ashes that hallow the ground where he sleeps. 

But his monument, grander than storied col- 
umn of granite or noble shapes of bronze, is set 
m the glittering brilliants of mighty states be- 
tween the seas. His noblest epitaph is written 
in the state that bears his honored name. The 
little town he planned to be his capital has be- 
come a city larger in area than any European 
capital he knew. Beyond his fondest dreams 
has grown the state he planted in the wilder- 
ness by ''deeds of peace." Out of the gloomy 
mines that slept in rayless mystery beneath its 
mountains while he lived, the measureless 



^t. 74 ] •' THE NOBLEST WORK OF GOD." 359 

wealth of his model state sparkles and glows 
on millions of hearth-stones. From its forests 
of derricks and miles of creeping pipe-lines, the 
world is lighted from the state of Penn, with a 
radiance to which the sons of the Founder's 
sons were blind. Roaring blast and smoky 
forge and ringing hammer are tearing and 
beating the wealth of princes from his mines 
that the Founder never knew. Clasping the 
continent, from sea to sea, stretches a chain of 
states free as his own ; from sunrise to sunset 
reaches a land where the will of the people is 
the supreme law, a land that never felt the pres- 
sure of a throne and never saw a sceptre. And 
in the heart of the city that was his capital, in 
old historic halls still stands the bell that first, 
in the name of the doctrines that he taught his 
colonists, proclaimed liberty throughout the 
land and to all the inhabitants thereof. This is 
his monument, and every noble charity gracing 
the state he founded is his epitaph. 



THE END. 



INDEX. 



Act of Toleration, The, 215 

Amyrault, Moses, 16 

Andros, Governor, 65 

Anne, Queen, 321 

Arran, Earl of, 183 

Arran, Lord, 20 

Ashton, Master, 223 

Assembly, The, 125; meets 
Governor Fletcher, 246; ob- 
tains increased power, 257; 
convened by Penn, 276; ac- 
tion on slavery, 290; dis- 
pute s between members 
from the province and the 
territories, 297; refuses an 
appropriation to the king, 
304, 310; address to Penn, 
310; disputes in, 314; its 
increasing independence, 
321; impeaches Logan, 328; 
action on Deputy-Governor 
Gookin's arrival, 334; ap- 
propriates money ' for the 
Queen's use," 338; prohibits 
the importation of slaves, 
340 

Aubrey, William, 326, 342 

Baltimore, Lord, 76, 153; in 

England, 159; 273 
Banks, John, 340 
Barclay, Robert, 66, 235 
Baxter, Richard, 13S 
Baxter, Thomas, 58 
Berkeley, Lord, 61 
Besse, 49 



Biles, William, 327 
Blackwell, Captain John, 216, 

217 
Blue Anchor Tavern, The, 94 
Bradford, William, 219 
Buchan, Earl of, 1S5 
Bushel, Edward, 39 
Butler, Sir Nicholas, 210 
Byllynge, Edward, 62, 63, 64 

Callowhill, Miss Hannah, 
260. See Penn, Hannah 

Callowhill, Thomas, 260 

Carpenter, Samuel, 309, 322 

Carteret, Sir George, 61, 63 

Chalfont, 50-53 

Charles L, 4, 5 

Charles IL, 6, 9, 42; issues his 
Declaration of Indulgence, 
57; releases Fox, 60; blesses 
the colonists, 65; his death, 
161; touching for King's 
evil, 163 

Clapham, Jonathan, 27 

Clarendon, Lord, 223 

Clark, Charles Heber, 286 

Clarkson, 206, 217 

Coltness, Sir Robert, 266 

Conventicle Act, The, 35 

Coolin, Annaky, 141 

Cork, Bishop of, 268 

Cornish, gibbeted, 177 

Cromwell, Mrs., 53 

Cromwell, Oliver. See Protec- 
tor, The 

Cromwell, Richard, 9 



\62 



INDEX. 



Declaration of Indulgence, 
The, 57 

Dixon, Jeremiah, 21, 99, 171, 
206, 249, 255; description 
of Penn's house, 279 

Durant, 320 

EastJersey,63,65; riot in, 300 

Elizabeth, Electress, 66 

Elliott, 223 

EUwood, Thomas, 52, 53, 
346 

Ely, Bishop of, 223 

English, Major, 144 

Evans, John, his character, 
323; his attempts at govern- 
ment, 327; his recall, 328 

Ewer, Friend, 143 

Falckenstein und Bruch, 
Countess von, 67 

Farmer, Anthony, 195 

Fenwick, John, 62, 64, 65 

Finney, Sheriff John, 325 

Fleetwood, General, 53 

Fleming, Justice, 59 

Fletcher, Governor Benjamin, 
232, 246 

Flower, Enoch, 95 

Ford, Philip, 329 

Fox, George, 12, his doctrines, 
13; persecutions, 13, 60; 
sails for Holland, 66; belief 
in witches, 13S; refuses a 
pardon, 167; his death, 224: 
advice in regard to slaves, 
289 

Frederick, Prince Palatine, 66 

Friends' Public School. 218 

Fuller, William, 224 

Gaunt, Elizabeth, 177 

Gibbs, E., 292 

Gookin, Colonel, 334; meets 

the assembly, 334 
Graeff, Abram Op de, 219 
GraefT, Derich Op de, 219 



Gray, Thomas, 325 

Grey, 175 

Guest, Judge, 320 

Halifax, Lord, 95 
Hamilton, Andrew, 318, 321 
Henderich, Garret, 219 
Hendrickson, Jeshro, tried for 

witchcraft, 141 
Hough, Dr., 195, 196 
Howard, Sir Philip, 208 

Indian Ben, 143 

Indians, The, 66; conference 
with Penn, 105; treaty Avith 
Penn, 116; and rum, 172, 
282; sell land to Penn, 301 

Ives, Jeremy, his contest with 
Penn, 45 

Ives, Rev. Mr., preaches 
against the Quakers, 44 

James, Duke of York, 9, 42, 
60, 76, 200. See James II. 

James II., 163; settles the dis- 
pute between Lord Balti- 
more and Penn, 170; issues 
declaration of indulgence, 
191; leaves England, 198; 
letter to Penn, 220; lands in 
Ireland, 222; defeated, 294 

Janney, Samuel M,, 206, 210, 
218, 264, 277, 342 

Jasper, Margaret, 3 

Jeffreys, 175, 294 

Jennings, Governor, 282 

Jennings, Solomon, 132 

Keith, George, 230 
Kensington Elm, The, 120 
Key, John, 124 
Kiffin, William, 209 

Leland. Charles G., 286 
Lloyd, David, 319, 335 
Lloyd, Thomas, 173, 216,217, 
229, 251, 254, 319 



INDEX. 



363 



Locke, John, 166, 227 
Loe, Thomas, 13, 22 
Logan, James, 291, 318, 319, 

322, 326, 350 
Love, John, 55 
Lowrie, Gawen, 63 
Lucas, Nicholas, 63 

Macaulay, 200; charges 
against Penn, 201 

Markham, Colonel, 76, 99, 
103; goes to i^ngland, 153; 
Deputy Governor, 229; 251, 
254, 257, 261, 271, 272; his 
son-in-law accused of pira- 
cy, 276; 278 

Marshall, Edward, 132, 317 

Mason, Charles, 171 

Masters, Sybylla, 343 

Masters, Thomas, 322 

Mather, Cotton, 138 

Mattson, Margaret, tried for 
withcraft, 141 

Mead, Captain William, 36, 60 

Menzikoff, Prince, 264 

Metamequan, 128 

Milton, John, 52 

Mintye church, i 

Molleson, Gilbert, 263 

Monk, 35 

Monmouth, 175, 207, 294 

Moore, Nicholas, 174 

Nead, Benjamin M., 286 

Nichols, Ann, 279 

Norris, Isaac, 319, 322, 337 

Ormond, Duke of, 20 

Paradise Lost, 52 
Paradise Regained, 52 
Pastorius, Francis Daniel, 2 19, 

289 
Pastorius, Franz, 75 
Peachey, Dr., 195 
Pearson, 103 
Pemberton, Phineas, 322 



Penn, Giles, 2 

Penn, Gulielma (wife of Wil- 
liam Penn), her death, 245; 
her character, 246, 345 

Penn, Gulielma (granddaugh- 
ter of William Penn), 351 

Penn, Hanncih, 291, 309; her 
care of her husband, 344; 352 

Penn, John, his birth, 277; his 
burial-place, 345; proprietor 
of Pennsylvania, 352 

Penn, Leiitia, 273; claims a 
slave, 292; 309; her mar- 
riage, 326; her burial-place, 
346, 351 

Penn, Richard, 352, 353 

Penn, Springett (son of Wil- 
liam Penn), 260, 346 

Penn, Springett (grandson of 
William Penn), 351 

Penn, Thomas, 352, 353 

Penn village, I 

Penn, Admiral William, 2; his 
career, 3; demands compen- 
sation of the Protector, 6; 
offers his fleet to Charles 
Stuart, 6; imprisoned, 7; 
his humble petition to Crom- 
well, 7; restored to liberty, 
7; resumes treasonable cor- 
respondence, 7; declares for 
Charles, 9; is knighted, 9; 
his offices, 9; refuses his son 
permission to join the army, 
21; his death, 42; relations 
with James, 200 

Penn, William (son of Admiral 
Penn), birth, i; ancestors, i; 
education, 10; religious sur- 
roundings, 1 1 ; hears Thomas 
Loe, 14; suspended, 14; re- 
turn home, 15; sent to Paris, 
16; meets Algernon Sidney. 
17; writes poetry, 17; en- 
tered at Lincoln's Inn, 17; 
goes to sea, 18; encounters 
the plague, 18; goes to Ire- 



3^4 



INDEX. 



Penn, William {Continued^. 
land, 19; military ardor, 20; 
refused permission to join 
the army, 21; portrait in 
uniform, 21; becomes a 
Quaker, 22; arrested and 
imprisoned, 22; his hat, 23; 
eliminated, 24; returns, 25; 
writes a book, 27; publishes 
" The Guide I\Iistaken," 28; 
discussion with Vincent, 29; 
publishes " The Sandy 
Foundation Shaken," and is 
arrested, 30; " No Cross, no 
Crown," 31; " Innocency 
with her Open Face," 34; 
his trial, 36; at his father's 
death-bed, 41; writes a re- 
port of his trial, 44; contest 
with Ives, 45; pamphlet 
against Popery, 45; in the 
Tower, 46; more pam- 
phlets, 47; goes to Holland, 
49; marriage, 50; "The 
Spirit of Alexander the Cop- 
persmith," 57; discussion 
with Baxter, 58; as arbi- 
trator, 62; prepares a consti- 
tution, 63; sails for Holland, 
66; returns to England, 69; 
accepts land for his claim 
against the Government, 71; 
draws up a constitution for 
Pennsylvania, 74; his moth- 
er's death, 77; letter to his 
wife, 83; the small-pox at 
sea, 86; conference with the 
Indians, 105; second treaty 
with the Indians, 128; dis- 
agreement with Lord Balti- 
more, 153; goes to England 
and sees the King, 159; his 
opinion of the King, 162; 
interview with James II., 
163; suspected to be a 
Papist, 168 ; " Fiction 
Found Out," 168; denounces 



Penn, William {Continued). 
Jeffreys, 175; pleads for 
Cornish, 177; and Elizabeth 
Gaunt, 177; goes to Holland 
as informal envoy of James, 
180; obtains pardon for dis- 
senters, 182; dispute about 
"quit-rents," 185; appoints 
five commissioners, i8g; 
writes " Good Advice to the 
Church of ^England," 193; 
arbitrates between the King 
and the Fellows of Magdalen 
College, 195; relations with 
James, 200; Macaulay's 
charges, 201; advice to Kif- 
fin, 209; summoned before 
the House of Lords, 213; re- 
forms the executive depart- 
ment of Pennsylvania, 216; 
his quit-rents, 217; arrested 
on charge of treasonable 
correspondence, 220; at the 
death-bed of George Fox, 
224; deprived of his govern- 
ment, 232; writes "Just 
Measures," 235; and other 
works, 236; maxims, 237; 
obtains a public hearing be- 
fore the king, 244; his wife's 
death, 246; reinstated as 
governor, 253; writes an 
"Account of the Quakers," 
and other works, 255; his 
position toward the Penn- 
sylvanians, 255; licensed to 
preach, 260; marries Miss 
Hannah Callowhill, 260; 
visits Peter the Great, 262; 
writes a pamphlet on blas- 
phemy, 265; goes to Ire- 
land, 266; loses his horses, 
267; draft protested, 272; 
returns to America, 273; 
lands at Chester, 275; life 
at Pennsbury, 277; yacht, 
280; dress, 280; charity, 



INDEX. 



365 



Penn, William {Contimied). 
281; opinion of tobacco, 
282; anecdote of, 284; on 
slavery, 288; elfort to im- 
prove the negroes' condi- 
tion, 290; frees slaves in his 
will, 291; buys land of Indi- 
ans, 301; return to England, 
308; requests of the Assem- 
bly, 310; sells land, 312; pre- 
sents act of incorporation 
to Philadelphia, 315; leaves 
Philadelphia for the last 
time, 318; his steward's dis- 
honesty, 329; letter to the 
colonists, 335; last literary 
work, 340; negotiations for 
the sale of his province, 
341; illness, 342; death, 345; 
burial-place, 345; will, 351; 
the gratitude of Pennsyl- 
vania, 353; character, 356; 
monument, 358 

Penn, William (grandson of 
Admiral Penn), 261, 274; 
goes to Pennsylvania, 322; 
returns to England, 326; 

327, 344 

Penn, William (great-grand- 
son of Admiral Penn), 351 

Penne, George, 208 

Pennington, Isaac, 51, 346 

Pennsbury, 277 

Pennsylvania, named, 73; 
condition of, 89; Penn's de- 
scription of, 148; growth of, 
295 

Pennsylvania, Assembly of, 
87 

Pennsylvania Hospital, 125, 
281 

Pennsylvania Legislature, acts 
of, 143; action in regard to 
Penn estates, 352 

Pepys, 15 

Perrot, John, 55; writes " The 
Spirit of the Hat," 57 



Peter the Great, 2T52 

Philadelphia, 90; yellow fever 
in, 274; act of incorporation, 

315 

Phillips, Mr., 343 

Pickering, Charles, 137 

Piracy, 2, 276 

Plague, The, 18 

Plympton, Rev. John, 268 

Popple, 167 

Preston, Lord, 223 

Preston, Mrs., 103 

Protector, The, 5; compen- 
sates Admiral Penn, 6; im- 
prisons him, 7; liberates 
him, 7; his death, 8; 295 

Proud, Sir John, 50 

Provincial Council, 125; first 
trial for witchcraft, 138; on 
slavery, 290 

Quakers, their doctrines, 26; 
settle in America, 63; de- 
clare slavery unlawful, 67; 
meeting-houses, 153; in 
prison, 165; waive the cere- 
mony of the hat, 193; opin- 
ions of Penn, 206; action in 
regard to slavery, 290 

Quarry, Colonel, 271, 272 

Ralph, Joseph, 325 
Randall, Edward, 273 
Reman, Robert, 257 
Rickmansworth, 54 
Rittenhouse, William, 219 
Robinson, Sir John, his grati- 
tude, 46 
Rupert, Prince, 35, 66 
Russell, 53 

Shippen, Edv^ard, 277, 316, 
321, 322 

Sidney, Algernon, 17; a can- 
didate for Parliament, 69; 
draws up a constitution for 
Pennsylvania, 74; beheaded, 
159, 175, 294 



366 



INDEX. 



Sidney, Algernon {Contiiiued). 

Sidney, Henry, 71 

Slavery, protest against, 144, 
218; in Pennsylvania, 288; 
advice of Yearly Meeting, 
289; action of Council and 
Assembly, 290; action of 
Assembly, 340; action of 
Parliament, 341 

Smith, Aaron, 167 

Sotcher, 280 

Southbe, William, 340 

Spencer, Lord Robert, 17 

Springett, Gulielma, 50, 345, 
346 

Springett, Lady, 12, 50 

Springett, Sir William, 50 

Stewart, Sir Robert, 183 

Story, Enoch, 325 

Story, Thomas, 263, 271, 274, 
316 

Sutciiff, 283 

Talbot, Colonel, 157 
Tamanen, 128, 136 
Taunton, 207 
Test Act, The, 59; repeal of, 178 



Tillotson, Dr., 168, 169 
Townsend, Richard, and the 

deer, 146 
Treaties, 115, 128 

Venables, General, 7 
Vincent, Rev. Thomas, 28 
Voltaire, 31 

Wells, Francis, 286 
West, Benjamin, 103 
West Jersey, 63, 65 
White, John, 144 
White, Sir Richard, 208 
Whitehead, George, 29 
Wilcox, Alderman, 325 
William and Mary, 215 
William of Orange, lands in 

England, 198; 220, 295 
Witchcraft, 138 
Women's rights, 236 
Wood, Sheriff Joseph, his 

joke, 286 
Worminghurst, 66 
Worth, Chief Justice, 72 

Yeates, James, 132 
Yellow fever, 274. 



IJ 926 



